I have a laptop running Win2k on a domain, supplied to me by my company. It uses a VPN to connect to my corporate network. I am able to connect to my wireless router and get to the internet and VPN, but I am unable to access shared resources (folders & printers) on any of the locally WORKGROUP connected machines on the LAN (all running WinXP). Is this possible? All I really want to do is access the printer and also file shares on various desktop PCs on the LAN.

I have the same issue and have not been able to resolve it. The problem lies in the fact that the computer is set to join a domain and you don't usually have admin rights to rename it - which it kind of pointless since you'd have to do that exercise all the time from home to office.

I've resorted to sharing bookmarks on the web and using a USB key for printing. It sucks but hey, the laptop is free for me.

I have the same situation and have been able to map shared drives. I have to do the mapping manually, though. I open Windows Explorer, select Tools>Map Network Drive then select a letter and type in the address using the format:

\\computername\sharename (file://\\computername\sharename)

Before you do this, you need set and name a shared resources on the specifed computer.

Also make sure you check off reconnect at login.

I had the same thing happen to me - I can't see the computers in the workgroup but I can manually map a driver on the other computers (so there is a network connection). I think it has somethimg to do with the NetBIOS. Does this make sense?

Ruth:)

Try opening a command prompt. On the command line, type
IPCONFIG /RELEASE *
IPCONFIG / RENEW
See if you get a new ip address, probably in the 192.168.x.x network.

tpeters,
I don't think that will work. His home network is set to manage computers (DHCP, etc.) for devices on the same workgroup. His computer is configured to contact a domain controller for that info - "never the twain shall meet".

Are you connected to the vpn while you are trying to access your home network? If so, you will probably need to disconnect from the VPN. From my understanding (forgive me, I am not a network guy... yet) is that if you are connected to a VPN, you can't access any network outside of the VPN tunnel, i.e. internet, shared drives outside the parameters of the VPN and the like. Hope this makes since

I have a laptop running Win2k on a domain, supplied to me by my company. It uses a VPN to connect to my corporate network. I am able to connect to my wireless router and get to the internet and VPN, but I am unable to access shared resources (folders & printers) on any of the locally WORKGROUP connected machines on the LAN (all running WinXP). Is this possible? All I really want to do is access the printer and also file shares on various desktop PCs on the LAN.
I have done this with an XP Pro computer which is a member of my company's domain and my XP Home desktop. THere are a couple of ways of doing this, but rely on you having administrator access to the company computer. You need to add a local user account to the domain computer which matches an account on the XP Home computer with the same password. Sometimes also the name resolution does not work on the home LAN, to work around this, from the XP Pro or Win2K computer Start -> Run then type \\IP\Share where IP is IP address of the XP Home computer. You should get prompted for the user name password, once this has been entered for the common user account you should get connected.

There is a way to get into Admin account, but its not nice. Basically I know how to remove Admin password. I don't if I should post anything about it. Haven't read the rules yet...