Networking together a Win 7, Xp, and Vista machine. Can see but cannot connect

K

Ktf Fang

Weaksauce
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Jan 15, 2009
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I have 3 machines in my home and each uses a different OS. I want to create a network in order to share files and a printer. The way I have always done this successfully is to turn on file/printer sharing and creating a workgroup that each computer will connect to. This was with all windows XP machines.


With the different OS's things are complicated. First of all, the computers can see each other across the network, they just can't connect to access the shared files. When I try to connect to the vista/win 7 machine from XP, I get the error " XXXXXXXX is not accessible, you may not have permission to access this network resource"

And when connecting to the XP machine from a vista/win 7 machine, it prompts me to enter a network password, which I have no idea where to find this. I tried my log on password, no luck. Router password, no luck.

Anyone have any experience with networking machines with different OS's? I thought setting up a network was as simple as making sure each computer is connected to the same workgroup, but apparently it's not.
 
You are going to scratch your head all day. This sounds like there may be all kinds of incompatiable settings going here. Give google and quick search and if you can't find anything, just abandon it. Go all Vista or all XP.
 
Well I finally got everything to share nicely via the shared/public folders. But I still can't right click>share a folder like that and have it accessible to other computers. Good enough for now I guess.
 
Open the Network and Sharing Center and make sure Network Discovery and File Sharing are enabled.
 
I would disable simple file sharing and then just make sure all of the computers are using a user account with the same username and password.
 
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