Help Networking WIN 7 and XP

OK, I have one WIN 7 laptop, and 2 XP laptops. I have set my sharing on my WIN 7 folders to share between machines with a particular .net passport. So it is pretty restrictive. On XP machine 1 all is well, I can network to the WIN 7 machine just fine, open all folders, files etc.. However, on the XP machine #2 I can set up a network connection it seems (I can map a drive in XP2 to the WIN 7 machine), but when I try to open any folder on the WIN7 machine it says they are "not accessable". Now this happens on XP 2 when I try to open a folder on the WIN 7 machine that has files, if the folders just have subfolders I can open the folder, but when I drive down to a subfolder that has files I get the "not accessable" message. Something is set up different between these two XP machines and I do not know what that is.

I have checked and all 3 machines are set-up with the same .net passport under user accts. Also I can access the two XP machines just fine from the WIN 7 machine, I just cannot access the WIN 7 machine from XP #2.

gordonware said:

OK, I have one WIN 7 laptop, and 2 XP laptops. I have set my sharing on my WIN 7 folders to share between machines with a particular .net passport. So it is pretty restrictive. On XP machine 1 all is well, I can network to the WIN 7 machine just fine, open all folders, files etc.. However, on the XP machine #2 I can set up a network connection it seems (I can map a drive in XP2 to the WIN 7 machine), but when I try to open any folder on the WIN7 machine it says they are "not accessable". Now this happens on XP 2 when I try to open a folder on the WIN 7 machine that has files, if the folders just have subfolders I can open the folder, but when I drive down to a subfolder that has files I get the "not accessable" message. Something is set up different between these two XP machines and I do not know what that is.

Are you by chance running "homegroup"???? Homegroup uses IPv6 and is for win 7 machines only. Since you have XP boxes you should be using the "workgroup" model. It is easy enough to verify. Simply create a new network connection using workgroup and see if it works


Ken

Ken,

Yes I am using Homegroup on the WIN 7 machine. What I didn't say is there is another laptop (#4) in the mix, a second WIN 7 machine, so that's why I wanted to use homegroup. Should I switch all 4 to workgroup? I really like Homegroup and since one of the XP machines (XP#1) seems to work fine with my current set-up I didn't want to change, thinking it was just something with this one XP machine (XP #2) that could be fixed. Would workgroup be best hooking up two WIN 7 machines and two XP machines in a home network?

Stick with Workgroup as long as you have XP in there.
If you want a thrill, set up a trusted Homegroup then check what information is offered and what is shared. Scary stuff. This part of 7 is much easier once learned, but seems full of holes.

OK, I have 3 Win 7 laptops,and one XP Home laptop on a wireless network. I want to have 2 of the Win 7 units and the XP unit sharing, and exclude the 3rd Win 7 unit from accessing the other 3. They were formerly all on the same workgroup, and I used Homegroup on the Win 7 machines. Things weren't working well with the XP machine sharing-wise.

I thought I could just make the 3 part of their own workgroup name in this network, but in testing it does not seem like that wil work.

How can I do what I want to do, that is have 3 laptops sharing(2 Win 7s and one XP Home) and exclude others on the wireless network access to those 3 laptops?

I would go old school, much easier to set up a workgroup and have users log on then to force a share into a Homegroup.

Set permissions by user. That way you can be on the "wrong" machine and log in with your own rights to download files while the machine's usual user cannot.

How to configure file sharing in Windows XP
will get you the idea. Just hang in there, it is complex on purpose to make you pay someone else. Don't do it, in the end you will win, just keep reading and asking.

The concept is really simple, each user has a password and users can be grouped. Permissions can be assigned to users or to groups and the users in a group inherit the group's permissions. Too bad the interface makes such a simple concept confusing.