File/Print sharing and FTP woes

Ok, I’m overlooking the obvious here, but this problems is giving me fits. File and Print sharing in XP Pro is hit or miss. Everything is set up right (guest account enabled, gets IP, both computers are on network, no firewall: windows or otherwise.) but sharing just isn’t happening. I know they are connecting because I can share an internet connection between them, and I can VNC into the other box.

The other problem I’m having is connecting to an FTP server. It errors saying “A connection with the server could not be established.” Again no firewall and the FTP server is up and running. I can connect to it from another PC no problems. I’m assuming it’s a windows setting because it will not connect with either WS FTP, Cute FTP, or IE.

Any ideas?

Have you tried creating a "machine" account? That is creating a user and pass on the server which you use on the client to log in?

Affirmative, and no luck.

What are you using as an ftp server?

The FTPs aren’t on my LAN, I can’t connect to anyone on the net. Sorry for not making that clear.

Do you know whether you have a login ? Or are these public ftp servers?

If it's internet explorer, if you click file, login as, and check anonymous, what happens?

No, these are private FTPs that I do have a verified working login for. I can log into them using any other computer which convinces me it’s an issue within XP. It doesn’t connect to send login info so checking/un-checking anon gives the same results. I’ve doubled checked every setting I can think of and verified firewalls are down, but still no go.

What happens if you use command line ftp?

Start, run, cmd

ftp ipnumber or server

enter user and pass

have a look here at the type of results you will get

No luck, I get the cryptic error message of “ftp: connect :Unknown error number”.

Do a tracert to the ftp server in question...

Also try specifiying the port number (usually 21)