networking xp to vista

[sourav]

i have a lappy and desktop. my desktop runs windows xp pro and windows vista ultimate. i have already networked windows xp of my desktop to the lappy. but i am not able to network vista with laptop's xp.

remember
workgroup is workgroup and i have kept lappy on automatic ip mode since it connects to internet through the desktop

 

[Ponmayilal]

and yep, I have a similar problem.My Desktop PC is the main PC from which I want to access my data and media files and runs Windows XP Professional SP2.The DELL laptop runs on Windows Vista Home.The Media Center PC in the living room runs Windows Mediacenter Edition 2005 which is nothing but Windows XP Professional SP2 with Mediacenter program integrated into it

The Netgear ADSL wireless modem Router is connected to the Main Desktop PC.The lappy has built-in wireless adaptor. A Dlink USB 2 wireless adapter plugs into the MediaCenter PC. I have successfully linked them together with my Netgear modem, router,accesspoint operating in infrastructure mode with WPA2-PSK encryption. I can access the internet on all three machines.The modem reserves the IP addreess 192.168.0.2 , 198.168.0.3 , and 192.168.0.4 respectively to the Desktop, lappy and mediacenter based on their Mac ID so that IP address conflicts are avoided.. HOME is the assigned workgroup name for all the machines. So far so good.

The question is what further needs to be done.The media center was not being shown in the network map of the Vista lappy and after investigation, I installed the Link Layer Topology Discovery - Kb 922210 which was missing in its network properties. The network Map now shows the lappy and the Mediacenter (which are wireless enabled,) as connected directly to the Netgear modem router accesspoint and the Desktop (primary)PC connected to the switch part of the Netgear since it is directly connected by the ethernet cable. Though internet sharing is working fine and I have no problems, I am unable to explore the Desktop or the mediacenter and the vista lappy gives an error message and asks me to contact my Network administrator. And I am the network administrator . What all I know is that something more needs to be done on all these two XP machines and the Vista lappy and what exactly are these. If any networking geek can throw light we will be happy.And Sourav is having exactly the same problem and I am indeed happy that I am not alone The aim is to share the files between these PCs.
On my desktop which is the primary PC I have one ethernet port free ( it has two built-in Network Chips.One is already consumed by the modem.).Will it help in anyway? I have been breaking my head since yesterday only to find I have no more today

 

[Ponmayilal]

Looks like nobody is into wireless networking and filesharing.

After a lil bit of search and research, I managed to successfully share files and folders between my Windows Vista lappy and the main XP SP2 desktop.Open the properties page of the folder/s you want to share on the XP machine,check share this folder on the network, give it a name you like and also decide whether you want to allow other network users to change the file/s or not and click on OK to close the Properties page.After doing this I still could not access the shared folders on my Vista Lappy.I found that the Zone Alarm firewall on the desktop was denying access to the Vista lappy.Since I have given a fixed IP address of 192.168.0.3 to the lappy, I included this address in the trusted list of the Zonealarm firewall and VoILA.......... I was able to access the shared folders on my lappy
But ya, I still do not know how to access the shared folders between the two XP machines.Windows Vista seems to be great as far as networking is concerned.One can easily see the network map and do a lot of networking tasks.I have come to like Vista on this one aspect.