Some basic questions about Seven & XP sharing.

[MSF4n]

Hiya!

I've got a home network with based on D-Link DIR-655 router, its IP address is 192.168.1.1, mask is 255.255.255.0 and it has disabled DHCP or any firewalls.

I have three computers in this network, two of them use Windows 7 Ultimate and the last, and old, one - Windows XP Professional.

Network group name is "HOME" on every PC.

I have some basic questions:

- why do I see this, while there's no user password on any PC and password sharing is turned off (along with this funny Homegroup feature killing all connections to XP):



- why it's so hard to make a normal, working LAN consisting of mixed (XP and Seven) PCs? I just love Seven, but all the new "improvements" in Sharing section are pretty frustrating,

- I guess there's no possibility of joining a Homegroup with Windows XP? And why, the hell, Homegroup always needs/generates a password:



I'm looking for simple answers, because I don't want to create new password-protected user account just for sharing purposes.

 

[not so gray matter]

Read this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/53830-file-sharing-between-xp-w7-vice-versa.html

Note: You have to use a workgroup, not a homegroup on seven.

 

[iseeuu]

Hello MSF4n, and welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

There was a similar topic a while back. Please check out this link to see if it will answer any of your questions?

http://www.sevenforums.com/network-sharing/66050-3-pc-network-sharing.html#post587385

Cheers!
Robert

 

[chev65]

For the password prompt problem do this on the XP machines.

Goto... Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Local Policies > Security Options

Scroll down to... Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts

Select... Guest only and not Classic. I checked on XP machine and Guest seems to be the default.

Suddenly those silly promps for user name and password go away when accessing Win 7 share from XP machine and it behaves more like XP file sharing without asking for Usernames and Passwords.

Although running the network set up wizard on the XP machines when you set up your Workgroup should have taken care of that for you. But from what you said that hasn't occured yet.

As for the Homegroup password, as you guessed Homegroups is not made to work in a mixed Op system network so if you joined a Homegroup you will need to leave it and then set up a Workgroup type of network.

Homegroups uses a password to connect to the Homegroup network, there are plenty of good reasons for that, one is that it provides an extra layer of security to the network. But you can't use Homegroups if you have an XP or Vista machine your network so no need to worrie about that. You will want to use the link below to "leave" the Homegroup network you created.

I have the same router as you do DIR-655 very good router in fact but.., the default gateway is 192.168.0.1 not 192.168.1.1 as you posted earlier. Also, unless you have a really good reason to disable DHCP I would enable it because it's much easier than using static IP's in my opinion. There is also no reason to disable the routers built in firewall. It provides an extra layer of security and works very well as is.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/43980-homegroup-leave.html?filter


http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/43629-network-location-set-home-work-public-network.html?filter

Networking home computers running different versions of Windows

 

[CommonTater]

Hiya!

I've got a home network with based on D-Link DIR-655 router, its IP address is 192.168.1.1, mask is 255.255.255.0 and it has disabled DHCP or any firewalls.

I have three computers in this network, two of them use Windows 7 Ultimate and the last, and old, one - Windows XP Professional.

Network group name is "HOME" on every PC.

I have some basic questions:

- why do I see this, while there's no user password on any PC and password sharing is turned off (along with this funny Homegroup feature killing all connections to XP):



- why it's so hard to make a normal, working LAN consisting of mixed (XP and Seven) PCs? I just love Seven, but all the new "improvements" in Sharing section are pretty frustrating,

- I guess there's no possibility of joining a Homegroup with Windows XP? And why, the hell, Homegroup always needs/generates a password:



I'm looking for simple answers, because I don't want to create new password-protected user account just for sharing purposes.

As the others are saying... you cannot use home network sharing with XP on the net.

It's pretty simple... Win7 knows how to do XP style sharing... XP hasn't the first clue what Win7 is up to... so you have to backdate your win7 machines...

Like this...
http://www.sevenforums.com/network-...-server-needs-access-win7-pcs.html#post684650

 

[MSF4n]

Well, thank you guys for the help

I'm not sure, but isn't there a bug in Windows XP?

I'm talking about "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts" policy. Well, it's, like chev65 said, set by default to Guest only and not Classic but it really works like it should only after i choose this option and click Apply. So I have to select already applied option and then apply it. Strange, isn't it?

About my default gateway and disabled DHCP - I'm always using 192.168.1.1 instead of 192.168.0.1 - force of habit Just don't like 0.x thing at all

DHCP is, and probably always was, useless for me and only one thing it can really do is giving an IP address to potential intruder. Additionally what about port forwarding (one of the most important things when it comes to p2p connections) and static IPs (I remember addresses of all my machines and always know which one I'm pinging at the moment) etc. I know about half static / half dynamic, but see no point in establishing one.

Thanks CommonTater, but in my opinion there's a bit too much work just to make it work. Sad, there's no "work in workgroup/work in homegroup" switch button.

Cheers and good luck!