Homegroup Setup. How to throw vista into the mix.

First off, thanks for taking the time to read ths, hope someone out there can help.

I have 2 win 7 PCs (my business computer and the kids computer), a win 7 netbook and a vista laptop.

I have setup homegroup with the 3 windows 7 machines, sharing music and videos and pictures with the whole network, and sharing my personal files using windows live ID manager so the kids cant access my work files. (i have linked my accounts to my own ID)

All this is now working the way i would expect it to and am happy so far.

I would like to bring on board the laptop running vista, it only needs to be able to work with my business pc, with the same permissions as i have in my homegroup.

is it possible to run a workgroup and a homegroup side by side, and what permissions effect what network?

groovyloopylou said:

First off, thanks for taking the time to read ths, hope someone out there can help.

I have 2 win 7 PCs (my business computer and the kids computer), a win 7 netbook and a vista laptop.

I have setup homegroup with the 3 windows 7 machines, sharing music and videos and pictures with the whole network, and sharing my personal files using windows live ID manager so the kids cant access my work files. (i have linked my accounts to my own ID)

All this is now working the way i would expect it to and am happy so far.

I would like to bring on board the laptop running vista, it only needs to be able to work with my business pc, with the same permissions as i have in my homegroup.

is it possible to run a workgroup and a homegroup side by side, and what permissions effect what network?

I believe it is possible, to run both. I personally run workgroup for everything and by-pass Homegroup, but it has some decent features, just don't know how well they work.

groovyloopylou said:

First off, thanks for taking the time to read ths, hope someone out there can help.

I have 2 win 7 PCs (my business computer and the kids computer), a win 7 netbook and a vista laptop.

I have setup homegroup with the 3 windows 7 machines, sharing music and videos and pictures with the whole network, and sharing my personal files using windows live ID manager so the kids cant access my work files. (i have linked my accounts to my own ID)

All this is now working the way i would expect it to and am happy so far.

I would like to bring on board the laptop running vista, it only needs to be able to work with my business pc, with the same permissions as i have in my homegroup.

is it possible to run a workgroup and a homegroup side by side, and what permissions effect what network?

It's been done but it's not meant to work like that at all. Save your sanity and set up a workgroup if you want a mixed Op system network. As you suspected the permissions tend to do strange things when you do that, like sharing the User file for no reason, other things of that nature. Unless of course you feel the need to reinvent the wheel "already invented". Then knock yourself out.

Or better yet, upgrade the Vista machine to Win 7 and use Homegroups "easy way".

another £120 for an OS or figure out workgroups...not a hard choice lol

but reinventing the wheel is kinda fun too

will give myself an hour to try using both, if that fails I will just make do with workgroups untill i get over the shock of buying another retail OS.

groovyloopylou said:

another £120 for an OS or figure out workgroups...not a hard choice lol

but reinventing the wheel is kinda fun too

will give myself an hour to try using both, if that fails I will just make do with workgroups untill i get over the shock of buying another retail OS.

There is a member here named "Redbird" who says that he managed to get Homegroups to work acceptably in a mixed Op system network. I havn't seen him around lately but he would know how to accomplish that, if it's possible that is.

okay, created a workgroups, didnt touch desktop win 7 settings apart from workgroup creation. set up vista laptop workgroup and shared a folder.

Please note my win 7 desktop user account and vista lappy accounts have same name and password.

Vista laptop account could see and modify windows 7 desktop shared files (inc the ones set to share thru the ID manager) and win 7 desktop could access and modify vista laptops files.

just got to test on other user accounts to check security etc, will post back soon as im done, got sidetracked connecting the 360 to media centre which is causing me more issues than anything lol.

first off woohoo

i created a test user account on both machines

from the vista laptop to windows 7 desktop, i was asked for a username and password

from windows 7 desktop to vista laptop - denied!

so to sum it up...

I have a homegroup setup between 3 machines sharing files by windows live id and general homegroup permissions

and

a workgroup setup between one windows 7 and one vista machine.

I think having the same username/pass on each windows account was the key in this instance.

ty to all who replied