Having an issue accessing XP computers / Linux computers from Vista box (recently upgraded to Vista SP1, but I think my issue may have preceeded the upgrade). When I boot up the Vista box, I have the problems described below. If I use the functionality to "reset connection" on the wireless connection, then most everything seems to work fine for a few minutes. "Most everything" here means The Vista boxcan accessthe Internet via the wireless router (it is a fairly old D-Link router) The "network" user interface discovers and displays the router and all the other computers (one Linux, others XP) which connect (wired or wirelessly) on the LAN. All the file shares on the network are accessible Running arp -a in a command box produces a list of all the IPs that should be there But, ipconfig /displaydns seems to claim that it cannot resolve names that seem to be resolving just fine Ping'ing NETBIOS names works, but uses IPV6 addresses for the XP boxes. After a few minutes, some of the other computers become inaccessible to the Vista computer (sort of one at a time), that is The XP boxes cannot get their NETBIOS names resovled and cannot be pinged by IPV4 address Attempts to use the file sharing interfaces get a "cannot find" message (both Linux and XP boxes) The Router, network printer, XP and Linux boxes still interoperate fine The Linux box, router, and network printer continue to respond to IPV4 pings. Internet access is still fine. My next try is to disable IPV6 on the Vista box, but before I do that, I thought I would see if there is any intelligence to be had on this Jonathan

I had the same problem. I checked, checked and check to see what happened. Microsoft last week sent a notification to all OneCare subscribers of an immediate threat to security and instructed Vista users to install it immediately. It tightens Layer Topology Discovery. Here is how to fix this. However there is still going to be problems with Ethernet based devices like NAS drives etc. I will keep you posted. Network Map in Windows Vista makes network diagrams of the connections between network devices that can be used to troubleshoot connectivity problems. Network Map uses a discovery protocol called Link-Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) that queries other devices on the network to determine how the network is organized. Windows Vista includes the software components that implement the LLTD protocol. For other devices on the network to be displayed on the map, they must enable a discovery protocol that can respond to the mapping requests from the Windows Vista-based computer. The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:Download the Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder package now. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4F01A31D-EE46-481E-BA11-37F485FA34EA&displaylang=en)

Thanks for the response, but LLTD is not the answer. I know this because I went to installLLTD on one of the machines with which the laptop had failing communications, only to remember that I had replaced that box and it was already running Vista. So, I went to the laptop, and reset the connection, and displayed the network map - the Vista box shows up on the top section, and the XP/Linux boxes show up in the bottom section. Then, after a few minutes, the Vista box moves down to the bottom section, and attempts to communicate with it are fruitless. Jonathan

Hi Jonathan, You can try to disable IPv6 first. Then, take a clean boot to check if the issue is caused by software conflict. Clean Boot ============================= 1. Click Start, type "MSCONFIG" (without the quotations) in the Search Bar and Press "Enter" to start the System Configuration Utility. 2. Click the "Services" tab, check the "Hide All Microsoft Services" box and click "Disable All" (if it is not gray). 3. Click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and click "OK". 4. Restart the computer and test the issue. Note: Clean Boot is a troubleshooting step. If some programs have been disabled, we can re-enable them later. If you see the System Configuration Utility, check the box of "Don't show this message" and then click "OK". Please monitor the system in the Clean Boot environment. If the problem does not occur, it indicates that the problem is related to one application or service we have disabled. You may use the MSCONFIG tool again to re-enable the disabled item one by one to find out the culprit. Hope it helps.