Sharing files between two PCs without Homegroup?

My laptop and desktop both run Windows 7 Professional with SP1 (32-bit). I'd like to share each system's data partition (not the system partitions) to each other for simple file copy tasks, but I don't want to use HomeGroup or anything similar.

Is there some free 3rd-party software to set up simple, no-frills drive sharing? I know I could do this with FTP, but rather than setting up a client on one computer and a server on the other (which I've done in the past) I'd prefer to just be able to mount the remote drives as local drives and access them that way.

It would be OK if the solution is read-only (i.e. I can copy files from the remote drive but not write to it).

Awesome, thanks! I'll try this out later. I did find out in the meantime Windows supports "old-school" networking without Homegroup, but tried another tutorial which was similar but didn't work at all.

Neither of my computers was able to find the other by name - I checked they're in the same workgroup, pinged each other successfully, tried by IP address, checked that required services are running, even firewall settings, but no go.

Maybe I'll have more luck with your guide. :)

In the meantime I'd still be interested to hear about any possible 3rd-party solutions that don't rely on Windows' own networking at all. (similar to FTP but more simplified)

Almost forgot to report back here. It turns out I'd already done everything right, following both your tutorial and the one I found via Google (which was very similar).

Except...Windows Firewall was still blocking file and printer sharing after all. DOH. Corrected that aaaand I'm in business. I'm more than happy with this solution, having no need for clumsy FTP or other 3rd-party software. AND, no Homegroup.

Thanks again for your help. Thread solved. :)