[Dabhand16]

Last weekend I accidentally bought a laptop. Careless, I know, but these things happen. Too many reasons to go into here. In spite of my undying support for XP in Rob's thread, I thought that sooner or later I would go to Vista, so it did not deter me when I realised that it was a Vista machine. I only want it for some web browsing and odd letters and stuff. Nothing too heavy at all. Consequently, it is a basic Toshiba L40 with a Celeron chip, 1 gig of RAM expandable to 2 gig and a 120 gig HDD partitioned into two 60's.

I won't raise the e-mail problems here as I can work-around them. My immediate problem is networking to my desktop.

After much toiling around the MS forums and other places, fiddling about with sharing and security settings, on the laptop I can see the desktop, printer and router. I can access and open the files, so it is looking good. I can't print to the printer hooked up to the desktop, tried to install an updated driver, but still no go.

On the desktop, I can see the router and the laptop, but when I try to open the laptop I'm asked for a username and password although I have not set one on the laptop. Mind you, the machine was on demo in my computer man's shop, so he has obviously been using it, but he did not say that here was any password set. I'm able to start the machine and do anything I want with no problems - installing software etc.

So has anyone else had similar problems, and more importantly, solved them? Bear in mind I'm not overly techie with computers. I think Charlotte might have, I remember a thread that I'm sure had similar network issues, but the answers were not posted.

[orangepeel]

make identical user accounts on each system (username and password) make sure the account has rights to access the share and/or printer.

should be u.

[Dabhand16]

Thanks OP I did wonder if I should go that way. At the moment I have no accounts on either machine.

[orangepeel]

u do. administrator with probably no password.

[GainfulShrimp]

As Vista is (I'm told) more security aware, it might insist on passwords being set for the accounts used on both machines. You should check that the share permissions allow both users to access it, too.

Even in XP, some of the networking features like Remote Desktop are sensible enough to refuse to work if passwords haven't been set.

Making accounts with the same username and password is a potential way forward but could get confusing to diagnose if it still doesn't work.

I would set up account passwords on both machines, then if you still don't have any joy, you could try mapping a drive using 'Connect as...' and setting the username and password of the remote machine's Administrator account. In the connect as dialog (assuming it's similar to XPs), you can specify the machine name before the username something like:

DH16LAPTOP\Dabhand

(Obviously you need to use the real machine name and admin account name.)

I hope this helps!

[Dabhand16]

Thanks for that GS

I tried OP's suggestion of setting identical user accounts, and now the desktop does not kick me out when i try to log onto the laptop, it says connecting...........but it does not!

I've got the sharing and security settings set to share, and I can access the desktop from the laptop.

When I put in my username and password in the laptop connect dialogue box, it does prefix my username with something like DH16LAPTOP\username when I hit OK.

BTW - thanks for the help Guys.

[GainfulShrimp]

No worries. Just to confirm... you need to specify the machine name of the remote PC in the 'connect as' box. This is to make sure you access the share as if you are on the remote machine.

Without the machine name, you will be using your local account to access the remote folder, and Windows probably won't approve (at least not unless you've specifically given rights over the folder to that account, which is unlikely).

So, for instance:

• Your laptop is called dhlap and your desktop is called dhdesk, for example's sake.
  
• Then you have two accounts (one on each), called Lapuser and Deskuser.
  
• You setup a share on dhlap, for a folder called SharedLapFolder (you give the share the same name to make things easy).
  
• To connect to SharedLapFolder from dhdesk, you should map a drive letter to \\dhlap\SharedLapFolder, using a username of dhlap\Lapuser and entering Lapuser's password.

If that doesn't work, I would be tempted to try using the old-school "net use" command. I have no idea if it's included in Vista but your old desktop should have it. To try that:

• Open a command prompt, using Start > Run > "cmd.exe".
• Type the following command, modified to include your own laptop name, share name, username and password:
  

  net use * \\laptopname\sharename password /user:laptopname\laptopusername

  So using the example names above, you would put:
  

  net use * \\dhlap\SharedLapFolder myPa$$word /user:dhlap\Lapuser

• You can use a drive letter instead of the asterisk, which just means 'use an empty drive letter'
• If you put this command into a batch file for ease of use, you should replace the actual password with an asterisk, so that you're prompted for it when you use the batch file. Otherwise if anyone accesses that batch file they'll have your password.

Although it might seem a bit unfriendly, the error messages returned by net use are often more descriptive than those given by the graphical version... so it might help diagnosis even if it doesn't work first time.

[Dabhand16]

Thanks for your continuing help GS. I've checked all of the settings, and fairly sure they are OK. Now checking firewall settings.

[GainfulShrimp]

Any joy with this yet?

[Dabhand16]

Since my last post I've not had a lot of time to sort this as it was my weekend on, and I've been busy.

I Googled 'xp desktop can't see vista laptop' and got reams of links back! I think it might be the most wriiten about subject on the planet. The Ms forums have shed loads of stuff on them.

I found some stuff about firewall settings (both machines have identical firewalls with default settings), but I have found some things that look promising. Just need some time to try them, earliest will be tomorrow night as I'll not be home til about 11 tonight - another 18 hour day

There was also an interesting thread in a computer forum about fooling Vista into thinking the printer (attached to the XP desktop) is really a local printer. Something else to try if I get bored with the network issue!

I'll keep this thread updated.

[Markulous]

Ironically, just doing this myself (not my laptop but setting up for someone else). Since I only want it to work on a temp basis, I've left it with the Vista lappy browsing the XP desktop - which it does very happily once I'd set IP address (I used fixed ones) and Workgroup (and beat it into submission over connecting to next door's wireless - to make it connect by cable in my house!)