Can access folders elsewhere w/W7; cant access W7 from elsewhere

First things first can you open a command prompt and type in the following exactly:

net view

Once you have done so it should list all available computers to the machine. Does your Windows 7 machine appear? If not then it may be a physical connection problem. Is the machine wired or wireless??

Many Thanks,
Josh :)

Hi - thanks for the reply. The W7 computer does indeed show up in net view.

Everything is wired.

Okay, next step could you please try and ping the computer to see if a response is returned. To do this enter the following command into the prompt

ping [insert computer name or IP address]

For example if the computer name was Josh-PC then I would enter

ping josh-pc


If that works then could you please enter the name of the machine into the explorer bar rather than the IP address.

For example if I want to connect to a machine called Josh-PC then I would input:

\\Josh-PC

If works then the available network shares of that machine will show. If not then please post the error message that you are receiving

Cant ping.

But before we go any further....

I can't turn on Network Discovery in Network and Sharing Center. That might be he problem. It was on before, but now I cant set it on; it keeps defaulting to off. I have researched this, and found some answers - including this forum. But none of the answers I have found relate to me. All of the appropriate services are on:

Base Filtering Engine
DNS Client
Function Discovery Provider Host
Function Discovery Resource Publication
HomeGroup Listener
HomeGroup Provider
Server
SSDP Discovery
UPnP Device Host
Windows Firewall

I have no 3rd party fwall, nor av. I can connect to the internet. W7 fwall is on, and I have reset to the default settings.

Ideas?

Can you turn off the personal firewall and then try to access the machine. I need to make sure that the machine isn't blocking requests since its one of the factors that can impede network communication. Especially if your ping requests timed out.

Also, on the windows 7 machine which cannot be accessed, can you please again go to command prompt and complete the following command. Please post the results:

ping 127.0.0.1

Many thanks
Josh

Ok, I turned the fwall off, and that automatically sets Network Discovery to on. I can now access the W7 machine from my Vista machine. Is it safe to run W7 with the fwall off? I assume no.

So I did some more research on fwall, and found a few things. One of the things I cant do (with fwall on, of course) is restore the default policy. I can restore default settings, but not the policy. I found a page that gives you instructions on how to "fix" the fwall, but wasn't sure if I should go there.

Did the local ping anyway, not sure if it matters:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Users\W7>ping 127.0.0.1
Pinging 127.0.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for 127.0.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
C:\Users\W7>

--edit--- wierd.... the forum sw is changing double-u 7 to Windows 7