(See also my other Vista Annoyance posts - turning off User Account Control, turning on Flip and Flip / Window Switcher, turning off Windows Security Alerts, getting an older program to work with Vista, and turning on Windows Aero.)
I always tell my daughters to share nicely. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t — it’s always quite a struggle. But computers — I expect them to share nicely without a struggle if I tell them to. With the new Vista operating system, however, it was quite a struggle.
See, my family and I have three home computers. Under the old Windows XP system, it wasn’t too difficult to get these computers to share. But now I’ve got Vista on two computers and still have XP on another two. And hoo-boy, a lot of steps are involved to get the Vista-equipped computers to share files and folders. Nearly all of it is listed in a somewhat helpful Technet page by Microsoft, some of which I shamelessly plagarize below — including photos.
Here’s how. (This post assumes that your computers are already connected to a network — i.e., they’re all already able to browse the Internet using the same router.)
- Open the Network and Sharing Center window by clicking on the Windows orb in the lower left corner, and then either right-clicking on Network and selecting “Properties”, or opening the Control Panel and double-clicking “Network and Sharing Center.” See picture below (click it for a larger version).
- If your network type is “Public,” you need to change it to “Private”:
- To the right of the network name and location type, click Customize.
- In the Set Network Location dialog box, click Private, and then click Next.
- In the Successfully set network settings dialog box, click Close.
- Under “Sharing and Discovery” in the bottom half of the Network and Sharing Center window, you need to turn all the settings from “Off” to “On” by clicking on the down arrow next to each setting, clicking on “Turn on …”, and clicking on “Apply.” But see some pointers below:
- For the “Password protected sharing” setting: you may want to leave this “On” or turn “Off” at your discretion. (I turned mine off.)
- For the “Public folder sharing” setting:
- If you want to share the public folder so that other computers on the network can access the Public share to open files, but not create or change files, click Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open files. This is the default setting.
- But if you want to share the public folder so that other computers on the network can access the Public share to open files and also create or change files, click Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can open, change, and create files.
- You’re done with the Network and Sharing Center window. Close it via the “X” button.
- Click the Windows orb at the lower left corner of your computer, and click on Computer.
- In the Computer window, navigate to the folder containing the file(s) or folder(s) that you want to share — e.g., “Pictures” or “Documents” or a specific file or folder within. Note: don’t open the folder itself that you want to share — just navigate to the folder that contains this folder.
- Right-click the folder that you want to share, and then click Share. The File Sharing window is displayed. (Click picture for a larger version.)
- If you have password protected sharing enabled: Use the File Sharing window to select which users can access the shared folder and their permission level. To allow all users, select Everyone in the list of users. By default, the permission level for a selected user is Reader. Users cannot change files or create new files in the share. To allow a user to change files or folders or create new files or folders, select Co-owner as the permission level.
- If you have password protected sharing disabled (like I do): Click the drop-down arrow inside the blank field in the File Sharing window, and select the Guest or Everyone account. Click “Add.” Then for that new account, click on the down arrow under “Permission Level” to change it to Co-owner (if you want anybody to read and modify files) or leave it at “Reader” (if you want other computers to just read but not modify your files). NOTE: this is where I got stuck before!
- Click “Share”, then “Done.”
- Ta-da! You should now be able to view the contents of this folder from any other computer in the network!
CRITICAL NOTE: If you selected “Everyone” when sharing a folder, you’re also making its contents available to any computer that joins this network. Many households, including mine, have wireless Internet via a wifi router. If you don’t have WEP encryption turned on, then I could just drive up and park on the street near your home, open my laptop, let it join your network via your wifi, and then nose around through your files. It’s particularly important that you have WEP encryption turned on for your wifi network. I plan to do a blog post about this soon.
April 5, 2007 at 8:04 am
Why not give something like Ubuntu a try. It’s free, it does the fancy 3D effect better and on lesser hardware, they ship the CD’s to you for free, it’s more secure etc, and more important doesn’t have DRM inbuilt.
Worthwhile learning about Linux (it’s not Windows, so try to approach with an open mind and not expect it to do what Windows do) - http://www.ubuntu.com
Finally - WEP encryption? Latest news now say it can be cracked within a few minutes - I’ll suggest you make use of WPA or better WPA2 where available and not WEP!!
April 8, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Great post, really helpful!
May 4, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Kind of sucks because I already got this far without help, but for some reason, if you try to share files between vista and xp it is extremely easy, but if you try to go from vista to vista, it does not let me share files beyond reader even though I have it set to co-owner…
May 21, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Thank you!!!! It worked…
May 22, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Not very helpful, You don’t really say what you do when you have NO users, NO passwords, NOTHING.
That’s my network. there are no passwords on any of the computers but I just CAN’T connect! It’s so frustrating!
May 22, 2007 at 5:25 pm
SpeedGeek — That’s why step #9 above is SO important (and in fact that was the one I had the most difficulty with). It’s for when you have no password and no users. Hope that helps.
May 24, 2007 at 7:17 am
thank you so much for this tutorial, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you!!
June 5, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Regardless of what anyone above has said - I can’t thank you enough for writing this article. I was completely screwed over by my new Vista’s annoying Fort Knox-style security and couldn’t for the life of me share over my network.
Thank you very much, I hope many others find interest in this article.
June 5, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Thanks, Nathan! Just curious — I’m seeing a large number of visitors just for this post — where did you “come from?” Did you find this via a search engine, or is there a link from another site (or sites)?
June 11, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I did all of this last night, but there’s one point I am missing:
The files are shared, but yet my two computers can’t “see” each other.
For example, after following all of the steps as outlined above, and sharing the desired folder(s) Vista gives you a dialog box showing the path name of what you have shared eg: //VistaPC/myphotos
When I enter that path onto my XP based laptop, it can’t access it.
Is there some kind of firewall setting that needs to be configured to allow the computers to see each other?
June 15, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Thank you so much for the information. I was so frustrated to not be able to get the file sharing to work. By just following you directions it worked in a couple of minutes.
Thanks again. The only problem I still have is that I can’t access the files of XP computer on the Windows Vista Computer. I can see the XP computer of the network but it won’t access. Any comments.
Thanks very much.
June 18, 2007 at 5:53 pm
My problem is almost the opposite of Edith’s. I can see the Vista computer from all 3 XP computers but cannot access it. On the Vista, I can access all others computers in the house fine. HELP!
I did all these steps before finding this site and am still searching for what is going wrong.
June 19, 2007 at 7:27 am
Hello Edith and Linda — let me look into these and get back to you. Hang in there, and sorry about that!
June 19, 2007 at 7:30 am
And 4G63, let me look into these as well. Sorry about the delays!
June 22, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I have been fighting this for 2 days now. I did get a little farther with your instructions. The step about adding everyone is much clearer in your instructions than the Microsoft article.
However I still can’t see the folder from the other computer. The second computer is running Windows 2000 and I can see the shared Vista computer, but can’t access the shared folder. When I email the link from the Vista computer to the Windows 2000 machine and click on it it tells me the network path is not found.
I will go very slowly back through your instructions again tonight and see what happens.
Thanks,
Stan
July 2, 2007 at 7:58 am
A greate help. much easier to follow than Microsoft help.
Tell them about Link-Layer topology mapper & responder.
July 2, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Thank you for this. It solved my problem of accessing my Vista folder from Windows XP - step 9 was my stumbling block. I hadn’t realised I had to click the “Add” button as well as selecting it from the drop down list. A bit dumb of me, I know.
One thing I did find was that I still couldn’t see the folder I had shared on Vista by default, but if I entered the network address, it opened it fine. I just then mapped the drive as a network drive and was away.
BTW, Google was my link to your post.
July 3, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Great article and very user friendly
I wish I had found this article before painfully inching my way through half a dozen other snippets gleaned from my google searches. I have done everything in this article, plus downloaded the LLTD patch for my XP machines from the microsoft website. (This enables me to see the whole network in the network map on my vista laptop). BUT…. now I can see my vista laptop under network>workgroup on my XP machine, it tells me that my vista laptop is not accessible and that I may not have permission!! Also I cannot see any other computer from my Vista laptop under network. Is there anything else I should have done?
Thanks Dom
July 5, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Sorry, but this doesn’t help me with my Windows ME desktop. My new notebook is Vista and I have a wireless router connection. The internet sharing is working fine. I just spent about 5 hours on the phone with Microsoft trying to get file and printer sharing to work. No dice. The ME can ping the Vista but the Vista can’t ping the ME. Microsoft blames ME. I blame Vista.
Sam
July 15, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Thank you! veryi nformative tutorial, I was fully pleased and sharing files instantly after struggling for almost 30 minutes.
July 21, 2007 at 7:22 pm
A local, well respected computer store recommended your article to me today. I followed all of the steps and I still have a problem. I have a laptop with Windows XP and a desktop with Vista Premium and I use a Linksys router. At first neither computer could see the other and then I loaded the LTDD patch. Now they see each other but I cannot access either one from the other.
When I tried your Step 9 and added ‘everyone’ to the list of users I was not able to share any folders. I received the message “your folder could not be shared”. Any suggestions?
July 22, 2007 at 9:12 am
This is John again. I identified my problem by turning off the Norton Internet Security Firewall that came with my new desktop with Vista. Now each computer can see the other. My next step is to learn how to configure the firewall so I still have protection, but can still use the network.
July 22, 2007 at 9:16 am
Hi John - glad you got the problem fixed! And that’s interesting, Norton is contributing to the problem. I personally don’t like Norton or McAfee - I use AVG for anti-virus and anti-spyware. It’s free and it’s pretty good. I wrote a post about that a while ago - unfortunately I’m away from the computer right now, but if you’re interested I can find it and link to it here.
August 7, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Arrg!! Can’t get this to work. I figured out how to make Norton trust my other computer, but I still can’t get either computer can see the files of the other.
August 7, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Fantomulo — be sure to pay particular attention to step #9. That seems to be the one that trips everyone up — including myself. Norton may be contributing to the problem too, ugh! Good luck.
August 7, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Hi John. Just wanted to let you know that Norton ended up being my problem also. I had looked all over the internet trying to find a solution to this problem. YOU…my man…finally gave it to me!!!! Thanks for sharing dude!!!! YES!!!!!
August 10, 2007 at 11:50 am
THANK YOU! FINALLY!
August 14, 2007 at 5:02 pm
HI
The article is good . the problem is that I can see the contents or files that are on vista computer from an XP computer, but when I want to see the contents or files on an XP from the computer that has vista on it I can not and it gives me message as unable to connect to the other computer.Check the name of the computer or domain. I tried many times it did not work.
August 14, 2007 at 8:46 pm
THANK YOU! I have been so frustrated ALL day with printers, pocket PCs, and software not working with Vista - it was so refreshing to find an actual clear solution to one of my problems: getting all my old files off of my Win2kPro PC to Vista. Thanks again; your info is much appreciated. Keep more like it coming!
August 15, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Hey, JGJones, why don’t you let him use Vista since he’s already using it?
Stop trying to push stuff on people; they don’t like it. Considering Linux is known by even the remotely computer savvy person, I would go out on a limb to say that he already knows he can switch to Linux.
Jesus, the Linux pushers are getting worse and worse.
August 15, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Nothing genious or ground breaking here. If you can get vista to network as easily as you just said, I wouldn’t even be complaining. I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t even get the 2 computers to see eachother. Although my client computer is getting the internet from my main computer via ad-hoc.
August 18, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Thanks for your help. It always helps to have a set of instructions to work to.. if you are at the stage that I was at, then you have tried so many things and changed so many setting that you don’t know where you are!
I had already succeeded in getting files from XP to Vista, it was just the other way round that was causing the problems. Firstly, on vista lappy, i hadn’t selected ‘modify etc..’ in public folder sharing. Also, needed to allow everyone, and name as co-owner. However, what really clinched it was making sure ‘allow users on network’ on the XP PC was checked.
Another point, when i first started I couldnt get either computer to see each other, and the problem was in the registry on XP, where allowanonymous had to be set to zero, as i didn’t use password. Why it wasn’t as defualt, who knows..
What a nightmare, networking used to be so easy!
:-)
August 19, 2007 at 4:54 am
I have the networks set up already. 2 XP machines and 1 Vista Ultimate machine. i can access all the shared files on both XP machines from Vista. Even though my Vista machine appears on both XP machines when scanning the network, they cannot gain access to the computer.
An error message appears saying that access is denied and that i might not have permission to access.
I have tried everything.
Please help me deal with this annoying problem.
August 23, 2007 at 6:51 am
Like Edith, my problem is that I have tried to set up the network so that a folder held on the XP computer can be accessed on the Vista computer. I am not trying to share files going the other way. I can neither see nor access the XP computer or shared folder.
There is no network set up wizard included with XP and when you click the option “set up a network” itonly gives you options for dial-up and wireless! There is NO option for what most people are surely using: a broadband router with multiple ports. I’m very annoyed!
August 23, 2007 at 6:52 am
Sorry - one correction to the above, I meant to write that there is no network set up wizard with the Vista. XP does have one. See what this confusion is doing tomy brain!
August 27, 2007 at 12:03 am
So are you going to get back to Linda? Because i’m having the same problem. I can access my friends xp computer folders from my vista computer. But we can only see my vista computer name and can’t access any of my folders on his xp computer.
August 27, 2007 at 7:55 pm
if you have norton internet security in your vista laptop just add the IP of any of your XP computers in the “Trusted” in fire wall setting
August 29, 2007 at 8:40 am
I have two Vista laptops and an XP laptop, all connected via a wireless router. All can see the internet and ping each other. The Vista computers can copy files from the XP laptops shared folder. I have disabled the Windows firewall and Zonealarm. I followed the instructions above to the letter and I still cannot get the Vista laptops to copy files from the public folders between each other. The Help instructions supplied on Vista are next to useless. I know that MS have tried to lock down all security ‘vulnerabilities’ in the operating system, butg when it take over a day to try (and still fail) to set up two laptops to share files, it just goes to show what a pile of crap Vista and the help instructions are.
September 13, 2007 at 12:06 am
i have no other peoples to share to in the list its not seein my xp
September 17, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I can’t seem to get this to work with Windows ME. I can see the Vista PC in the Network Neighborhood on the ME box, but when I double click on it, I get prompted for a password. I have identical username/passwords setup on both computers. I have Password Protected Sharing turned off. I added the Everyone group to the Folder share permissions list and gave it Co-Owner permission. Has anyone been able to successfully share a Vista folder with Windows ME?
Thanks
October 7, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I have the same exact issue as I have a drive on my Vista computer shared out, but my WinME computer is not able to view it. I was always getting a password prompt, turned that feature off and still getting it. Then took ever user known to Vista and gave them full control access. Now I get a message “Access is denied”. Has anyone successfully viewed files from ME to a Vista machine?
October 15, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I recently purchased a laptop with windows Vista Home Premium. I always had no trouble networking or file sharing until I came across Vista. I tried many different tuorial and forum sites and nobody seemed to have the right answres for me. Your tutorial was the only one that was able to help.
Thank You!
Scott D. Lombard
October 15, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Scott — Glad this was helpful to you! Feel free to pass this blog post’s link on to others.
Chris — I’m afraid I can’t help you with Windows ME issues. I’m surprised, though, that XP and ME operate differently regarding file-sharing, though.
October 24, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I’ve been writing applications for Windows since Win3.1, and this is just bullsh*t. I hope someday what happened to Dell happens to Microsoft and they wake up. There is no technical reason why this has to be this hard! You *could* just right-click and choose ‘Share this folder with everybody on my local network’ and have the *software* figure out how to do it. But no. It’s just lard-butt indifference on the part of Microsoft’s engineers and their managers. Why should they spend 1,000 man-hours to make something easy for customers, when they can spend 40 hours coding some witless modal dialog with some checkboxes, 20 hours documenting it (badly) and then let their customers waste 10,000,000 hours dealing with it! Do the math - Microsoft projects 1 billion Windows users next year (http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=596). So a problem that wastes 1 hour for 1 customer in 100(!) will cost the global economy 10 million hours. But from Microsoft’s view, it doesn’t cost them anything. What are the customers going to do, switch to Linux? Well - the customers *are* doing something, actually, they’re buying record numbers of Macs. I’m a software engineer, that’s why it pisses me off so much when Microsoft’s programmers treat their customers like cockroaches.
November 12, 2007 at 11:14 am
PG,
I have just installed a “wireless router” in my home, and we have 2 computers: a desktop w/ Windows XP and our laptop has Windows Vista.
I was successful in getting the laptop to be able to access the ‘net around the house, but I am completely lost when trying to get my laptop to access files that are on the desktop.
Can you point me to a step by step way of getting the desktop w/XP to share w/the laptop running Vista? Also, do I have to load each program on my desktop to my laptop in order to access the files? (e.g. iTunes, or Word files?)
Just wondering–you seem to have knowledge of this, and it might save me $200 from hiring the geeksquad to come out and just fix it. :)
Thanks for any advice you can give.
Bob
November 12, 2007 at 1:47 pm
i have sharing working 90% of the way. The only problem I have is that when I add a file to a folder that I have already set up as a share, that new file is not automatically shared. (Grrrrr).
The work around for me right now is, turn OFF sharing on the shared folder, then turn it back On again; this seems to flag each file as sharable (just a guess).
As with other aggravating annoyances, this used to work file on XP.
November 12, 2007 at 1:57 pm
One other hint for anyone pulling their hair out because computers can’t see each other: Check the WORKGROUP NAME on each system. The default name in Vista is “WORKGROUP”, but the default name in some earlier versions of windows was “MSHOME”.
To check the name, right-click on the Computer (or My Computer) icon and select Properties. The workgroup name is listed along with the network name of your computer. On Vista there is a ‘Change Settings’ short cut, and on earlier versions there should be a tab on this Properties dialog that says ‘Network Identification’ or some such.
GL2U!
November 21, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Grrrr. I followed this instruction and was able to set up. It was working fine. But then yesterday I had to reset my router for some reason. Then, I fowllowed again the instruction with fully confident that I could do it because I did it once. Turn outon my head because I keep pulling.
November 21, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Grrrr. I followed this instruction and was able to set up. It was working fine. But then yesterday I had to reset my router for some reason. Then, I fowllowed again the instruction with fully confident that I could do it because I did it once. Turn out I was wrong. I don’t think there are many hair left on my head because I keep pulling.
November 22, 2007 at 1:46 pm
As a commenter said earlier do not use WEP. There is software available that can crack it in a couple of minutes. Anybody who is trying to nose around other people’s networks can use this software. Use WPA instead.
December 5, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I know this post was made back in April, but I’m sure there’s people new to networking that stumbled upon this page, like I have.
This past week I pain-stakingly set up my router & configured all the settings on both my XP PC and Vista laptop. The ONLY problem I have now is this:
>>> While my XP PC can access Vista’s “Public” folder and change/move/modify files, it is not the case for my Vista laptop. On my Vista laptop, I CANNOT change/move/modify any files on any shared folders on my XP PC. <<<
This leads me to believe that my XP PC is restricting access, but I don’t know the source. I tried turning off the firewall, did PING tests & the like but I cannot find a solution. So if anyone has any advice, please share here. Thank you.
December 7, 2007 at 7:49 pm
[...] front page of StumbleOn. My most popular post ever is ironically one of my geekiest posts ever, Windows Vista Annoyance #3: file / folder sharing between computers on a network. It’s regularly on the top of my DAILY list of most-viewed blog posts, mostly because of [...]
December 14, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Jerry make sure that in the share options with the drop down where you add users that when you add the laptop with Vista you change the dropdown box after adding it to owner or co-owner or whatever option it is the default setting is read only so you can’t modify the files or anything unless you change that dropdown to something other than read only. Hope that Helps.
By the way thanks for the great article you just got me and about 20 other people that I will now show how to get this up and running. Thanks a million that step nine was a tricky bugger.
To anyone else having troubles make sure that the other OSes you have on the network are enable to share also.
December 15, 2007 at 12:21 am
I was having the same problem as alot of people with my Vista computer and the XP’s. After reading through this, one post stood out and fixed my problem. Having come with a free version of Norton, Norton had its own firewall which prevented the other computers from accessing Vista.
Started up Norton Internet Security->Personal Firewall/Configure. Picked the Trust Control side bar setting, and the Trusted window. Just added the IP’s for the XP computers and now they could access the Vista computer.
December 19, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Article was helpful but did not solve the problem of connecting a Vista machine to a Windows 2000 computer. The 2000 computer can ping the Vista machine but the vista machine can’t ping the 2000 machine and neither can find the other on the network. Any suggestions?
January 3, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Thank you for this!
January 9, 2008 at 12:02 am
OK, I’m sure I’m a dunce. When I click “PRIMARY” (under Network and Sharing Center). A box pops up titled “Connect to Primary” and requires a user name and password. I have used every user name and password I have and always get “Log on Unsuccessful”. Thus, I can not view anything from the Primary PC. Where am I going wrong?
January 10, 2008 at 8:37 am
Wes — hmm, have you tried leaving both fields blank, and/or making sure you have “Password protected sharing” set to be “off”?
January 16, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Unbuntu? Lesser Drive? You have GOT to be kidding. What’s a “Lesser Drive”? My ubuntu install is 7.9 Gigs. Don’t gimme no “Lesser Drive” bullcrap : ). It’s a gigantic system hog JUST like any other OS (even WITH most services off - That’s how it SHOULD be. The ONLY thing good about Ubuntu is the Synaptic package manager. The look and feel of Ubuntu is behind OSX and Vista. Also, it sure does do everything I want it to do just like Windows or Mac. Noobs shouldn’t act like they know what’s up especially when it has NOTHING to do with the topic.
Thanks for the Vista help. It does not resolve my issue but i’m glad to see it has helped others. Ciao-Ciao!
February 3, 2008 at 9:40 am
I just came across this tutorial yesterday after struggling with setting up a shared folder on my new Vista desktop for 3 weeks. Step 9 - no other web site gave this info. Thanks!
February 22, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Thanks for the tips. I have the no user - no password situation and was starting to lose what little hair I have left trying to set up file sharing. I and my meager patch of hair thank you.
February 23, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Thankyou thankyou thankyou. Halleluyah. My Vista media PC was getting dangerously close to being hurled from a 1st floor window…… literally MONTHS of exasperation are at an end.
February 24, 2008 at 8:17 am
My question was about using the wireless router to print from a laptop accessing the internet wirelessly to a printer connected to my desktop using Vista. I don’t see how this answers my question.
February 29, 2008 at 3:17 pm
thanx buddy it really works…
March 1, 2008 at 11:41 am
All great stuff, but I have a Vista Ultimate machine with VMWare on it and I cannot for the life of me get sharing to work grom an XP Guest to the Vista Host without it popping up a UserID and password dialog.
When XP wsa the host there were no problems. Sure I can map drives so that the shares re-mount when the guest boots with a UserID and Password, but on a reboot, the connection fails and the mapped drives dont mount…
Any suggestions??
March 5, 2008 at 6:56 am
I followed these instructions, and they worked perfectly for sharing individual folders from Vista on my network.
The question I now have is: How do you share entire drives from Vista on a network? Between XP computers I can easily share the entire C drive (or any other), but when I try to do that with Vista, I get error messages on my other computers. When you right-click the drive in My Computer, you don’t get the same file sharing window with drives as you do with folders.
Any suggestions?
And thanks so much for you help!!!
March 26, 2008 at 11:05 am
I have the same problem as a long-ago previous post but have not seen solutions posted. Descr: Vista desktop direct wired to Linksys w/less router (WRT54GS(no ver #)) which communicates with my XP laptop wirelessly). The XP laptop has the LLTD patch and can see and work with files on the Vista but not the other way around, the ‘view full map’ will show the laptop but it can’t be opened. The XP has full sharing on its C:\ drive. A test utility shows that the router does not support UPnP so I’m thinking of upgrading the firmware to get it to see if that helps. I have experimented with turning off the firewall. Pls advise. Thanks!
April 8, 2008 at 1:03 am
After spending the better part of the day trying to figure how to use Briefcase and/or Sync with my Vista and XP computers I turned to the internet. Basically, I fouund out it couldn’t be done. I read Microsoft’s instructions on how to share files and couldn’t understand any of it. I found this site and followed the steps. It worked! I checked my files about five times on both computers and everything is fine. Thank you. And I am even getting to bed on time. Yeah. BTW I have McAfee and for me it wasn’t a problem.
April 8, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Yep, seems Norton was the problem with mine too. Two workstation computer bought at the same time, both with the Norton free trial installed on them. I thought what the hell, 90 days of free Norton. Installed Quickbooks and fought with it for two days before I came here and saw the post about entering in the IP address in the NIS firewall.
I should have thought of that first.
Oh well, all is up and running now.
April 24, 2008 at 5:46 am
Thanks, you really make it work.
April 26, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I have a functioning network with 3 computers. HP Laptop running Windows XP Home, HP Pavilion 9880 running Windows XP Pro and my new HP Elite running Vista Home Premium. I have setup an exact user account on all three computers with the exact same password. I log in to all 3 with this same user account. I have ZoneAlarm setup on all three computers with a firewall access provided to the network range 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254 so that all routers and computers are allowed. I have disabled the Windows Firewall and the Nortons Internet Security on my Vista. Only Nortons AntiVirus is running on the XP’s. I am able to view and access both XP computers from my Vista. I am unable to view or access the Vista from either XP. On my Vista, I do have Password protected sharing set to On. In step #7, you state “Right-click the folder that you want to share, and then click Share. The File Sharing window is displayed.”. When I click Share, I do not get the same window as you. This is Windows Vista Home Premium. I get the usual C: Properties with the General/Tool/Hardware/Sharing/Security/Quota tabs. In the Sharing tab, C:\ is showed as Shared and the Network Path is \\HP-ELITE-1\HP_Elite_C.
Any suggestions on how to get the XP computers to be able to view and access my new Vista computer?
May 16, 2008 at 2:19 am
ITS NOT CALLED NORTONS!!!!!!!! ITS F**KN NORTON