file sharing between XP pro and 7 home premium

Wonder if anyone can help me.

Not finding sharing between 7 & XP easy. When we had only XP pcs my client set up file sharing with read/write control to everyone. The file was on one PC held in that PCs My docs folder - much of this is historical, not the way we we do it now, however would like to know if there is a way to resolve the problem without making significant/wholesale changes.

Previously, the "owner" opened the file at the start of day, when anyone wanted access XP pro created a copy which allowed the "owner" to update the file as necessary. Now with 7 when this machine opens the file it grabs control, and the "owner" when he updates, it creates a new copy (why does 7 do this! GRRR).

We have now changed the permissions on XP so that other users only have read access. However this creates a problem as another user does need to gain update access at certain times (originally the "owner" would then close the file on his PC).

A convoluted system but it is what worked and what it is what they are used to. Is there any other way, simply, to give another user update rights, specifically by PC rather than universally?

Thanks for your extremely fast reply, but could you please explain how to do this in more detail, do you mean just changing the workgroup from MSHOME to something else on the win 7 pc?

The third download .XPS link explains in detail how to set up seperate User accounts for different levels of access without using the group policy editor.

Download details: Windows 7 & HomeGroup: Sharing with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and other operating systems

To keep those files in sync you might try the sync center for that. The link below explains how.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...sked-questions

Hello , and thank you for your constructive suggestions.

Two things here, not clear in my original post: (i) the files in question are held on the XP pro PC, not the win7 PC - (ii) secondly the Win7 machine is using Win7 HP.

I will look into sync as suggested, but I have one further question if we upgrade to Win 7 Pro, and if we use XP mode, whilst the system exists in its present state, will the file sharing revert to what happened when all PCs were using XP, or will the Win7 PC still influence how files are shared across the system?

Longer term we will change the system as this issue won't go away, and frankly their system is now no longer suitable going forward, but need a temporary solution until we can do this.

Thank you for this, very helpful - only wish Microsoft gave a full tutorial on this as it is a critical part for businesses that gradually upgrade to 7, surely most companies don't go out and replace all at once!

As the 7 PC is HP I have for the moment changed the workgroup, and reverted XP ro read/write to put the client back to where we were. I am trying to persuade the client to upgrade to 7 Pro to make things easier.

So in summary the responses to my original question have been great thank you.