Networking will not see non-windows 7 computers.

Both Homegroups and Workgroups won't work on cross Op systems, those are made for your Windows 7 machines only.

For machines running something other than Windows 7 use the public file sharing option, set everything as shown below on the shared Windows 7 machine. You will also need to enable sharing with full access rights on the Vista and XP machines.

You can use the Public password protected option "on or off" to toggle if a machine can be accessed or not.

I had tried that previously actually. I had put it back to Default as the other Win-7 machine is working at default.

Anyway, I just put it to enable again, and rebooted. It didn't seem to have any effect.

I'm attaching a screen shot of the main setting windows to see if theres something that seems out of wack that I'm oblivious to.

Thanks for your continued help.

Steve.

Yes, I do understand the homegroup/workgroup situation.

I said in the initial message that homegroups were disabled, and that workgroup was enabled.

All discovery and sharing options are on, (as per my last message's attached screenshot). And the settings are the same on the two windows 7 machines as far as I can tell (iguana-PC and Mike-PC). The iguana-PC cannot see any other machines on the network except for the Mike-PC (also running windows 7), while the Mike-PC can see everything.

The iguana-PC can open an explorer window with access to the shares on the one of the other network boxes (xp-64) by typing in the IP address directly, and can ping it, and from it ping to the Iguana-PC. But cannot see anything but the other win 7 machine in the network window. (There is another win7 machine in the network that is currently off, which it can see as well).

They are both clean installs.


I hope that clarifies the situation.

Thank you for any further help.


Steve.

I tried the network mapping, and it works fine. It works the same as if I type in the IP address of one of the other boxes manually.

ie: 192.168.6.xx = \\computername\drive

At the top of the explorer window it says Network > computername > drive if I click back on the Network part it takes me to the Network explorer window but that computer will not be visible in the list.

There are several computers and drives that need to be accessible, so mapping them all out is not the solution I was hoping for as they change over time. But it is weird that I can access them manually, but not via the network explorer.

Any other thoughts? and as usual thanks for your continues help.

Steve.

Hey there,..

I tried the stop services, and it didn't make any difference except that I can't manually drill over the xp machine I've been testing with via IP anymore.

It immediately jumps to saying The Internet, and then says Windows cannot access this folder.

I can still get over to it by the \\computername\drive process.


As for going and adjusting all the IP's and DNS's on the machines is really not feasible as it would disrupt the other machines on the network (which are several)... and as only 2 of the win 7 machines are having this problem while 2 others aren't, and the mac/xp machines on the network are working fine.

really frustrating... any other thoughts are always appreciated.


Steve.

Hiya,..

I can access files on the xp machine by doing a network map to the drive

\\COMPUTERNAME\drive

I cannot connect via IP anymore (which I could before) afp:\\192.168.1.xx

I can ping the xp box, and the xp box can ping the win7 box.

The win 7 box cannot see the xp box in the Network explorer (or any other xp machine on the network, only the other win7 machines).

does that make it clearer?

Thanks again.


Steve.