Sorry if this has been suggested - I only briefly skimmed the entire post.
I had the exact same issue with my new Win7 computer not being able to see my XP computerss in my networked WorkGroup. What finally solved it for me was to change the workgroup name on the Win 7 computer. Restart. Then changed it back to my existing WorkGroup name - and bing - all of a sudden it could see the XP machines in my WorkGroup.
Hope you find your fix.
I had the same situation but with Windows 7 not seeing the
XP computer. Turns out the XP computers need the Link-Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder component.
link: Network Map in Windows Vista does not display computers that are running Windows XP
I downloaded and installed the component, and instantly the
Windows 7 was able to see the XP computers.
Hope this helps.
jc
Thanks Dizzy, I have seen that before but never needed it for my Vista machine to see my XP machines but that is probably because I was running SP2 on both machines. Hopefully it will help some of these people out.
For those of you running XP pro, follow the steps in this tutorial to enable user and group sharing on the XP pro machine which might work better for some of you.
How to Share File with Group and User Permissions in Windows XP
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