Windows 7 Pro 64 bit + XP Pro Workgroup Problem

[JayGuitarMan]

Hi All,

I bought a laptop with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit a few months back. Being in school I never added it to my home's workgroup (I don't use it all that much). However, working at a friends house I would like to be able to see all of his network computers and network hard drives. I have been looking this stuff up all week. When I click on my network folder I don't see anything. There is the router model under "Network Infrastructure" and I see my computer's name under "Media Devices". I don't see my own computer or any other networked computer or drive.

I tried to see if this worked at my house. I made the necessary changes to the workgroup settings. All my computers there have the same workgroup name. At my house there is a Vista Home Premium 32 bit laptop, XP Pro 32 bit desktop. They are all wireless. The Vista laptop can see all the other computers including itself and access everything. The problem is between the Win 7 laptop and XP desktop. Sometimes my desktop can't even access the workgroup. When I try to see the workgroup computers I get the following error:

\\workgroupname 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 network path is not found.

On the rare occasion my XP desktop can get into the workgroup and sees the other computers I still can't access the Win 7 laptop. I get the same error as above expect it says my computer's name.

All the computers have descriptions and names with only alphabetic characters.

I can access any computer using it's ip address, but I don't run a static ip, nor do I want to. I would also like to add that when the Win 7 laptop is not on the network, the XP desktop and Vista laptop work fine. I can even access the workgroup from the XP desktop without that error.

I would like to mention that when I first had my laptop, either in December or January, I had it at the same friend's house I mentioned before and everything worked fine. I could click on the network folder and see his networked computers and drives. I do not know what has happened since then. His network hasn't changed so it must be something on my computer. I'm going nuts looking at all this. Please help! Thanks in advance to anybody that attempts to help me!

 

[JayGuitarMan]

I finally found my answer. I have all 3 of my computers networking perfectly. After some more searching I found the answer. There was nothing wrong with the Vista PC or the XP PC.

Here are the setting I had my Windows 7 PC on

• "Home" network type
• Network Discovery On
• File and Printer Sharing On
• Public Folder Sharing On
• Media Streaming Off (I had it on and it worked too)
• 128-bit encryption
• Password protected sharing is off (I don't know if it matters or not)
• HomeGroup Connections say: Use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers.

The problem was that the Node Type under ipconfig /all said "Peer-Peer" or something similar. I followed the steps on this article, You cannot view other workgroup computers on the network on a Windows XP-based computer, on both my XP PC and Windows 7 PC. It was a simple registry delete and restart.

I wanted to share that with you all. I hope it helps somebody out there!

 

[agallar2]

Jay,

When I'm on xp mode and I click on the workgroup I get workgroupname 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.

do you have any suggestions of what I may be able to do to get the virtual xp account to be able to see computers and shres in the same workgroup?