Win7 Laptop can't see XP computers

[Emily7]

Hi,

Networking dufus here... I have a new Win7 laptop, an older XP Pro laptop, and an XP Home desktop. Have a mixed Linksys router sharing DSL to the home. Both laptops are connected to the wi-fi network and no problems getting to the internet, but neither Laptop can see one another on the network.

I have turned on file and print sharing on both machines. I have not enabled homegroups on the Win7 machine, since I do understand that that can only be used by other Win7 machines. I have the MSHOME network defined on both XP machines. Is there a way to allow the Win7 machine to join the MSHOME network so that I can share files between the various machines?

Hope I've explained this well enough. Networking is NOT my forte!

Thanks much...

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello,

Networking is not my forte either, but can I suggest a Workgroup? Homegroup is not compatible with older versions of Windows, but workgroup is.

You can join a workgroup by going to System Properties>Computer Name.

Workgroup is at the bottom. Image taken from Brink's tutorial here.

 

[chev65]

Hi,

Networking dufus here... I have a new Win7 laptop, an older XP Pro laptop, and an XP Home desktop. Have a mixed Linksys router sharing DSL to the home. Both laptops are connected to the wi-fi network and no problems getting to the internet, but neither Laptop can see one another on the network.

I have turned on file and print sharing on both machines. I have not enabled homegroups on the Win7 machine, since I do understand that that can only be used by other Win7 machines. I have the MSHOME network defined on both XP machines. Is there a way to allow the Win7 machine to join the MSHOME network so that I can share files between the various machines?

Hope I've explained this well enough. Networking is NOT my forte!

Thanks much...

The workgroup name needs to be the same on all machines. So you can change the workgroup name on the Win 7 machine to MSHOME to match the other XP machines, or change the workgroup name on your XP machines to WORKGROUP doesn't matter either way as long as they all have the same Workgroup name you should be able to share files with them. This tutorial explains the process pretty well.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...mputers-running-different-versions-of-Windows

 

[CarlTR6]

Thank you for the tutorial. I needed that to have network withn my wife's EXP laptop.

 

[chev65]

Thank you for the tutorial. I needed that to have network withn my wife's EXP laptop.

No problem Carl, I'm glad it helped.

 

[Emily7]

Thanks Jonathan_King and chev65! Your comments definitely helped. I changed my Win7 laptop's workgroup to MSHOME, which I figured I needed to do but didn't know where to do it. Networks are something I only play with once every few years when I get a new system, so I forget how to do basic stuff, and of course, every O/S is a bit different. However, still no joy.

I kept poking around on the XP Laptop, because neither of the other two machines could see it, so I finally discovered that its Sygate Personal Firewall was not set up to allow it to be seen in the network. Changed that, and now I'm feeling the love!

Thanks so much!
Emily

 

[Jonathan_King]

You're welcome, Emily. Thanks for letting us know your results. I'm glad to know we could help you.

 

[chev65]

Thanks Jonathan_King and chev65! Your comments definitely helped. I changed my Win7 laptop's workgroup to MSHOME, which I figured I needed to do but didn't know where to do it. Networks are something I only play with once every few years when I get a new system, so I forget how to do basic stuff, and of course, every O/S is a bit different. However, still no joy.

I kept poking around on the XP Laptop, because neither of the other two machines could see it, so I finally discovered that its Sygate Personal Firewall was not set up to allow it to be seen in the network. Changed that, and now I'm feeling the love!

Thanks so much!
Emily

Glad to hear you got it sorted out Emily, yes those third party firewalls cause nothing but problems. If everyone would just tell us about those firewalls it would be the very first course of action I would take. Thanks for telling use what fixed your problem.

 

[Emily7]

You guys were so good, I'll try you on this one...something I did today trying to get networking working has resulted in a serious new problem on my Win7 laptop. All of a sudden, I couldn't open any of my .doc files (using Openoffice, which has worked fine forever). Got an "access is denied" message. So I uninstalled Openoffice and am attempting to reinstall it, but get another "access is denied" message.

Tried re-installing a couple of other small programs from the .exe files in my Downloads directory, and also get "access is denied" errors. For example, when I try to install winmail-reader-setup.exe, I get "Unable to execute file in the temporary directory. Setup aborted. Error 5: Access is denied"

What in the world have I done?! This is on my Win7 laptop, and my account has administrator privileges. I am running Vipre as my firewall, but the same behavior occurs if I disable it.

Help!!

 

[chev65]

You guys were so good, I'll try you on this one...something I did today trying to get networking working has resulted in a serious new problem on my Win7 laptop. All of a sudden, I couldn't open any of my .doc files (using Openoffice, which has worked fine forever). Got an "access is denied" message. So I uninstalled Openoffice and am attempting to reinstall it, but get another "access is denied" message.

Tried re-installing a couple of other small programs from the .exe files in my Downloads directory, and also get "access is denied" errors. For example, when I try to install winmail-reader-setup.exe, I get "Unable to execute file in the temporary directory. Setup aborted. Error 5: Access is denied"

What in the world have I done?! This is on my Win7 laptop, and my account has administrator privileges. I am running Vipre as my firewall, but the same behavior occurs if I disable it.

Help!!

This problem seems fairly common. One person fixed it like this.
Tried all of the above using win 7 with live mail. Set the default app for .doc to wordpad when into live mail and opened an email with .doc attachement. Then went back and set the default app back to ms word. Boom done problem solved. I think this whole thing started when i removed ms works.

You can get there by typing "default programs" into start/search window and hitting enter.

 

[Emily7]

This problem seems fairly common. One person fixed it like this.
Tried all of the above using win 7 with live mail. Set the default app for .doc to wordpad when into live mail and opened an email with .doc attachement. Then went back and set the default app back to ms word. Boom done problem solved. I think this whole thing started when i removed ms works.

You can get there by typing "default programs" into start/search window and hitting enter.

Okay, that's cool, I can use Microsoft Works to view my .docs, but the other problem is more serious - can't install any programs due to the Error 5: Access is Denied". I've been poking around in all the Users/account settings, and my account is still set for administrator privileges, but something is definitely wrong. I probably need to get into a different part of the forum for this question!

 

[Emily7]

Just a quick follow-up. Got some assistance on the general forum with my issue opening .doc files and installing programs. Was able to do a System Restore back a few days. Looks like the problem was the new firewall (beta version!) I recently installed. All is well now. Thanks again, folks!