Cannot see XP shares from Win 7 PC. Please help!

I had 2 PC's at home, both running Windows XP (call them WinXP_1 and WinXP_2) and with shares on the "MSHOME" workgroup, with an ADSL wireless router providing the network access point.

I then got a new PC (Call it Win7_1) and installed Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and also shared some of its folders.

When I first installed Windows 7 all the PC's could see each other's shares, and in the "Computer" section on the "Network" page of Windows 7 Explorer it showed itself as well as the two XP PC's. I hadn't changed the workgroup name on any of the PC's - It just worked.

I then had problems with my network after renaming the network connection and it took a lot of messing around with my wireless properties of Win7_1 to get it working again.

After I got that working I later found that Win7_1 could no longer see WinXP_1 or WinXP_2. However the XP PC's could see Win7_1.
This might have been caused while trying to resolve the previous problem, or it might be unrelated.

There is definitely network connectivity between the PC's. From Win7_1 I can ping WinXP_1 and WinXP_2, and even view/operate WinXP_1 using a VNC viewer on Win7_1.

I have changed the workgroup name of all the PC's to "WORKGROUP" but still no joy.

In the "Computer" section on the "Network" page of Windows 7 Explorer it now shows only itself (Win7_1). If I double click on that it gives the error messag "\\Win7_1 is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The specified network provider name is invalid."

One other thing that might be a clue: When I first installed Windows 7, I'm pretty sure it only showed 2 network adapters: Ethernet adapter and Wireless. Later on (when I started poking around to try solve this problem) I saw that there was now a third adapter - The Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport, but reading on forums it looks like this is normal.

I've been tearing my hair out over this for days.

What do you think could be the problem?

Thanks
Dacs

The first thing I would suggest is to uninstall your network adapters & drivers using control panel and/or the device manager, reboot and reinstall.

Make sure you have the necessary network driver software before you do so.

At least this may give us a clean slate to work with.

Thanks sup3rsprt.

OK, done that. I'd expected I'd have to connect to my router using the ethernet connection to get the drivers back. But surprisingly, although I'd checked the option to delete the drivers when uninstalling, after rebooting the wireless card was there again (no messages about "found new hardware") - All I had to do was reconnect to my home network.

Something else I've found: If I try to connect Win7_1 to a shared folder (e.g. "MySharedFolder") on itself by entering \\Win7_1\MySharedFolder it gives an error as well as offers to diagnose the problem. The diagnosis says:
'The remote device or resource won't accept the connection. The device or resource (Win7_1) is not set up to accept connections on port "The File and printer sharing (SMB)".'

But as far as I can see it is (remember that I can see the shares on Win7_1 from my XP Pc's), and if I go to the "Network and Sharing Center" and click "Change advanced sharing settings" it shows that "Network discovery" and "File and printer sharing" are both turned on.

I have tried turning off the firewall on both Win7_1 and the XP PC's, though file sharing is allowed anyway.

I installed a virtual machine and did a clean install of Windows 7 into that to see what Windows shares it could access. Due to the nature of VM's, though (and it's the first time I've used one) I couldn't access the same subnet as the other PC's. But I could get the virtual OS to view shares on itself without giving the error I get on my real install.
In a last ditch attempt to sort this out I deleted all registry values and keys holding information about wireless netoworks I'd connected to, but that still did not resolve the problem.

In the end I used Windows Easy Transfer to copy my data to an external drive, did a clean install of Windows 7, and then copied my data back. All shares are working again now.

You need to make a couple of changes to resolve the problem.

1.0 Type ipconfig /all in cmd prompt and see the node type of the top of black screen under windows ip configuration. It if shows up as unknown or peer to peer you would not be able to talk to the other xp pc's.

To change this, rum cmd prompt as administrator and type regedit. Then click yes when promted to do so. Then expand the right triangle HSKY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then expand SYSTEM, then expand CurrentControlSet, then expand services, scroll down and expand NetBT, then expand Parameters. Keeping Parameters highlighted on the left side, right click DHCPNodeType icon on the right pane and click modify and set the Value date to the number 4 and base as Hexadecimal. Then close the regedit.

2.0 Be sure th set the same xp workgroup in the system properties in the win 7 machine as well. I believe you may have already done this but just be sure to do so.

Restart your PC and the problem should get resolved.