Home networking problem (1 Viewer)

I've tried solving this in the past, never figured it out, then eventually gave up. Now, though, I really need my two computers to talk with each other, so I'm giving it another try.

I have a living room PC running Vista and a basement PC running XP. Both are connected properly to a home network.

The Vista PC sees the XP on the network diagram and can open and revise files nicely. This is what I need both machines to do.

The XP, though, does not show the Vista PC when I diagram the network connections. I cannot bring up any evidence of the Vista's existence from the XP machine.

I set-up the network from both PCs a couple of times over. I enabled file sharing on the Vista. I followed three different troubleshooting suggestions within the Vista help file. No luck.

I've also tried temporarily disabling the Vista's firewall.

Any suggestions?

thanks,

Jon

EDIT: This may or may not be relevant, but I am able to see and print on the basement (XP) printer from the living room (Vista).

I have not accomplished this task yet. My Vista laptop will not print to my XP desk top.

Thanks for the answer, Dave. I have it partially solved.

The default user group for XP is MSHOME.
The default user group for Vista is USERGROUP.

How stupid is that?

So now I can see the documents from each printer, but I am unable to save edits; I get a message that the documents are Read Only.

Still working on figuring that out.

Jon

I'm going to guess you can't save files edited on the XP machine on the Vista machine's hard drive. It may even be the case that you can't save edits made on the XP machine on either computer if the file originated on the Vista drive.

This is because Vista comes with a default security level so high and so intrusive that it gets in its own way. OTOH making changes to the security, espeically global changes, is such a giant pain in the ass that many users end up turning almost all of it off, thereby leaving the computer less secure than a typical XP box.

I have a friend who dabbles in astrology, and who recently got a Vista desktop. The only astrology program she ever learned to use was a "really DOS but it can run under Windows 95" job that she had on a CTX laptop that was obsolete when someone gave it to her about 10 years ago. And no, she didn't have the original installation CD or diskettes or whatever the hell it came on. (I won't even go into what I had to do to get the program and her data files off the damned thing, since the thing had no CD burner and the first iteration of Windows 95 didn't recognize USB drives.)

I finally copied everything to the Vista PC, duplicating the directory structure, and the program ran. But it couldn't save data. I finally had to login as Administrator and give the program admin rights to its own directory before it could save a freakin' file.

There's a good chance that Vista is hosing you up and that you may need to grant specific permissions to the XP machine and/or the default user on that machine at the subdirectory and possibly at the file level.

Regards,

Joe

Well, the files I'm trying to edit originate on the Vista computer and I'm trying to open them from the XP.

When I messed with it a while ago, I was able to see the files, open the files, but not saved changes to the files. That's when I wrote my last post.

I went out and ran a few errands and returned, optimistic that I'd be able to solve this last piece of it.

Now, though, I can't even open the Vista files from the XP; Word "encounters a problem and must shut down".

Now it's asking for a password each attempt - when I was able to open the files, a password was not needed.

Here is what's most frustrating: Nothing was done to the system that might have initiated these changes (password/no password, seeing/not seeing files, etc.). It is entirely illogical and thus, very difficult to pinpoint the problem.

How am I supposed to solve the problem if the rules keep changing? (rhetorical question, that)

Jon