Networking mystery

Hi all, Hope you can help me with this one its driving me nuts. I have a small network a Laptop running Vista & a PC running XP. They are connect via a wireless router the PC is connected via network cable from a LAN port on the router . The laptop is wireless. Internet wise they both work fine. The problem is I can see and share files & folders from the Laptop, but if I want to share a file from the PC I can't as I can not see it in my network. Once it was the opposite way around I was also able to use the printer with the laptop. I can also ping the laptop from the PC but I cant ping the PC from the laptop. It's doing my head in I hope you can help. Thanks, Wizzkid

Hi, Three thoughts for you. 1 Firewall…..have you permitted access? 2 If Xp is the Home edition you will need the guest account to be "on" 3 Network name..make it the same for both machines Regards paws

Hi Paws, thanks for your reply. The edition of XP is media centre edition The network name is the same on both machines And the firewalls have been disabled to test if the firewalls were the problem Thanks, Wizzkid

Hi guys, Has anyone else got any ideas, gotta say I'm a novice at networking so I'm stuck. Thanks Wizzkid

See this excellent tutorial by SpaceCowboy706 here: http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Home-Networ…ng-t102163.html

Thanks I will have a read through the tutorial . Wizzkid

Hi Paws, thanks for your reply.

The edition of XP is media centre edition

The network name is the same on both machines

And the firewalls have been disabled to test if the firewalls were the problem

Thanks,
Wizzkid

Without 3rd party software, or downloading the MS patch on XP machines, VISTA MACHINES WILL NOT SEE XP MACHINES IN A WORKGROUP.
This is by design. Vista uses a different method of 'detecting' other PC's in a network, and does NOT hear the XP PC's shouting their presence.

As I said MS has a tool for this now, and I believe there may be others.

You CAN use the netbios name a create a shortcut on the Vista box to the XP box, (as long as that resource is 'shared'.) You may have to activate the guest account on the XP machine, if browsing via NETBIOS yeilds a permissions error.

Tallon41

Hi,
lots of avenues for you to explore here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPo…4&SiteID=17

The Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) responder patch referred to by Tallon41 can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details…;displaylang=en

lots of folks, these days, tend to forget to close down and restart their machine's after making changes and this is generally advisable.
Good luck
Regards
paws