Windows 7 - Is there a way to file share with XP?

I need to be able to file share with drives on my main PC, I have tried setting up homegroup but this did not help me at all. If it doesn't then my question would be is Microsoft going to make file & printer sharing backwards compatible?

Hi djhallucn8,

have not tried with XP yet but It fileshares with vista without homegroup no problems. just check the normal things workgroup, shares set-up, identical users etc if you give me an bit will see if my XP box is visible from 7 ...

Trying to do the samething here. Seven on lappy. XP on desktop. Can't seem to figure out how to set it up. It would b nice to print to the printer connected to my desktop from my Lappy.

GBridge works for file sharing but not printers.

Ok,

Have set-up sharing on my old xp box, (took a while didn't have screen or anything connected ), and
at the moment this now shows in Network and sharing centre (I have the LLP provider running on XP),
and I can link to shares via \\servername\sharename.
at the moment I cannot browse the network for resources but obviously can see the shares.

I can also ping the xp box by either name or IP address

whatasteal, you could try to set-up your printer as local then set up a network port pointing to the \\server\printername

XP can see and browse the network and a vista and Windows 7 box

it may be that something is not working on XP or one of the old protocols not working on Win 7 so will have to check this out and post back

Thanks Barman, Your relpy put me on the right track. All I need to do to access my XP shares is type
\\myxpcomputername
in explorer and hit enter.

Hi Whatasteal,

First
glad to hear you're up and running.

Second
an update - after a while a refresh of the network on the windows 7 machine showed the XP Box and it's shares, there was a similar problem with Vista so will have to check out solutions and try applying to Windows 7

Wow, I will try this today when I have some time, for now I have a Bucs game to watch.

I can see my XP and WHS box on the network map after installing LLTP but they still don't show in Windows Explorer. Yes, you can access them by \\name but this only a temproaray solution. It doesn't stick.

If you cant make and XP product show up this will be a show stopper for many people. I can not believe that MS doesn't know about this issue or why it was allowed to get this far.

Anyone found any solutions??

Rich

Best I could figure so far is to pin windows explorer to the task bar then right click, properties and change target to \\xpcomputer name.

Note: Won't stick after reboot.

what is Gbridge? i've been trying to file share with my xp laptop but can't figure it out.