Desirable feature- Find a computer in network - Network Neighborhood blues

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 02, 06:13

Although powerful in MANY MANY MANY ways, the 2XExplorer does not have one basic feature: finding a computer in the network.

From my personal experience, I have found this Windows Explorer feature to be indispensable: When the network has a mix of Windows 95,98 and NT computers, some of the computers do not appear on the network neighborhood, but they show up when a particulr computer is specifically searched for. (Why does this happen? No idea- but it DOES happen all the time! )

Can we have this feature in 2xExplorer/xplorer2 please?

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 02, 11:55

Self-correction!

I tinkered with 2xExplorer a bit more, and found that this feature IS available, and is accessible as follows:

1. From the Tree pane (right-click on Network Neighborhood).

2. From the folder pane, when the Network Neighborhood is one of the items displayed in the folder pane. (right-click on Network Neighborhood).

I was actually expecting the feature from a drop-down menu as in case of Windows Explorer (old habits die hard!)

Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience. Perhaps this topic can be added to the FAQ?

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Jul 07, 18:36

i have to admit that i've never used this "Find computer" command myself -- i guess i'm not using networks too much.

Still, if you know the name you're looking for, wouldn't a UNC path in the address bar do the trick without searching (?) e.g.

\\computerName\share

perhaps a network fanatic can enlighten us all here !

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 08, 06:09

Oh, Yesssssssssssss. It works!

(Not only that, but it works in WIndows Explorer, too! )

Now why was I using that ungainly "Find Computer" at all??:rolleyes:

I also wonder- Are we missing something when we use the address bar method, as compared to the "find computer" method? Will both methods work identically in all cases, such as the WIn98 P2P network, where some PCs are always missing from the Network Neighborhood? :sly:

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Jul 08, 12:15

i don't know much about networks
however UNC paths are a standard thing for accessing remote computers

i don't know why some computers don't show up automatically. Perhaps it has something to do with how they are organized in "domains" or something.

Thracx · Post by **Thracx** » 2007 Aug 27, 21:16

nikos wrote:i don't know why some computers don't show up automatically. Perhaps it has something to do with how they are organized in "domains" or something.

For reference, there's a setting deep within the TCP/IP settings on the computer's networking adapter called 'NetBIOS'. I know about everything that this does, but I do know that if you 'Disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP' (or you can disable the Windows NT Service) then you won't appear in the list under My Network Places -> Entire Network -> Microsoft Windows Network. I just tried disabling it on my machine and not surprisingly, I wasn't even able to list the machines on my network. Typing in UNC paths always seems to work.