Ping one address, reply from another?

I have a network of 4 computers at home, using 192.168.2.x. On one laptop, I have Comodo 3.0.16.295, and although I thought I set the rules correctly, I can't share folders on the laptop with the other PCs. (The laptop can see and get files from the other PCs, and can be seen on the network and responds to pings.)

I tried accessing the shared folder from one of the PCs and then checked the Comodo firewall log on the laptop. It showed that it had blocked attempts to connect to Port 139, but strangely the attempts came from 192.168.44.1 and 192.168.206.1, not the IP address of the other PC, which is in the form 192.168.2.x. I've tried this a few times, and every time I try to access the laptop files from another PC I see similar log entries (accessing Port 139 from 192.168.xxx.1).

Then I tried pinging one of these funny IP addresses and I got this:
=============================================
C:\Documents and Settings\User>ping 192.168.206.1

Pinging 192.168.206.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 202.xxx.xxx.xxx: TTL expired in transit.
Reply from 202.xxx.xxx.xxx: TTL expired in transit.

Ping statistics for 192.168.206.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 2, Lost = 2 (50% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
=============================================

I blanked out the last parts of the IP address that responded, but I checked it out via WHOIS and it's a legitimate one, owned by one of the ISP providers in my country.

Any idea what's going on here? Why am I getting access attempts from "private" IP addresses that are not on my network whenever I attempt to access the laptop from another PC and why does pinging one of these addresses get a reply from another (and external) IP address? (The wireless adapter on my laptop is turned off and I'm not running any wireless router.)

 

I had the exact same problem.

I couldn't share folders and the computer wouldn't answer to ping from other pc's in the network. I had stopped the Comodo Firewall a few times and same thing for the antivirus.

After searching a part of the day yesterday, I end up today doing :

1) I ran Win XP Network setup wizard to enable file sharing. The only thing I changed in the setup was the workgroup name. However, after running the wizard, the problem was still there.

2) I uninstalled Comodo firewall and restarted the computer.

Then, magic! Was it the network wizard or the fact that I uninstalled the firewall? The thing is that I didn't restart the computer after running the wizard. Anyway, I didn't reinstalled Comodo for now. I have a spi firewall on my router (dd-wrt).

Jean
http://www.borealweb.com