Vista / XP home workgroup setup?

[Norcross]

I recently purchased a new HP desktop for the home (mainly for my wife), and it came with Vista 64bit. I also upgraded my laptop to Vista 64bit. Both are running fine, with no issues, including being able to map two network drives from my home server. However....

The XP machines in my house were not showing up in the 'network map' on the Vista machines. After reading a few articles, I realized that for the Vista machines to see the XP machines, they needed to have a LLDP hotfix installed. I installed it, and now they're visible. However, I can't actually open them and see the shared files.

Any ideas?

 

[Brandon]

First and foremost, make sure the firewalls are off. XP doesn't like file sharing with the firewall enabled (Vista is able to work around it, but XP doesn't.. most of the time).

That's normally the cause of issues like this, and on a home network, the firewall isn't doing anything, it's made for computers that are connected directly to the internet.

Inside your home network, your protected by NAT (Network Address Translation) which at it's lowest form, keeps you from, will probably out proform the XP firewall.

 

[scotty]

Couple things:

1. Make sure file/print sharing is allowed in the XP firewall (or for the purposes of testing, disable the firewall entirely).

2. Make a test share on the XP machine, allowing network users to change files.

Sometimes running through the silly 'set up a home network' wizard in XP helps to make sure some of the silly things in the back end are enabled (i.e. File and Printer sharing client). That should also enable the exception in the firewall too.

 

[Norcross]

i may go ahead and re-run the Network Setup Wizard on the XP machine. I've also thought about upgrading it to Vista as well, since it has more than enough juice to do it. I've really begun to like how Vista handles sharing within the workgroup, so for consistency's sake, I might go ahead.

 

[Tamarin]

One thing to be aware of with file sharing in windows: Usernames and passwords need to match across the computers. Windows passes the user credentials as it accesses the share/files across the network. If they're not found, the computer will then usually try the guest account. But that one is hit and miss. So I've found it best to make sure that the user accounts are consistent.

Tam

 

[scotty]

One thing to be aware of with file sharing in windows: Usernames and passwords need to match across the computers. Windows passes the user credentials as it accesses the share/files across the network. If they're not found, the computer will then usually try the guest account. But that one is hit and miss. So I've found it best to make sure that the user accounts are consistent.

Tam

Hmmm, don't think they need to 'match'. I've noticed if Simple File Sharing is off, that's when XP will start harassing you for credentials on the network. But as such, you should just be able to plug in a password and it should authenticate properly. If Simple File Sharing is ON, anything you share is basically acessible to all users so there's usually no need for credentials.

But i've never run into a scenario where having matching accounts helps much. But you never know, XP and Vista can be a little strange with authentication sometimes.