Hello Everyone.

Im new to the forums and m hoping i can get some help on this issue thats driving me insane. So In our house we have our main dekstop.. my laptop, my brothers laptop and another desktop and its all conected wirelessly. They all have the same workgroup name and the sharing folder that we use has been working great for all these computers... its how we pass around our photos and music. All these computers are XP except for the windows 2000 but anyhow its been working fine... now heres where im having problems. My sister bought a new laptop its vista home basic. I set the workgroup name to be the same as every other computer in the house... but now what the heck do i do to get this sharing folder open on my sisters laptop. I went to computer>map network drive and the computer will not show up on the map network drive thing.. i thought this is where it would show up under the workgroup and then id click the folder to add it? but i guess not?
Also... i went to add a printer and then i selected to add a network printer and it cant find the printer we have on our main computer... but everyother computer in the house is connected to it wirlessly with no problem.

Ive been spending hours upon hours on this today trying to do my sister this favour of transferring all her music from the main computer to her laptop throughj this sharing folder but its not working out and its worrying me too because i am buying a new laptop in a week and i need to transfer my things over to the new laptop as well.. so if anyone has any idea on how to succesfully share this folder and connect the printer id be very happy!

Thanks in advanced. Daniel

Try the following:

Open Network and Sharing Center by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Network and Internet, and then clicking Network and Sharing Center

If you have already done this then let me know.

Yup. I have been there before.

The networking is quirky in Vista Basic. I need to read up more on what it will and will not do. I know Vista Home Premium has more networking capability than basic. Vista Basic is pretty much an OS for those with one computer that want to surf and email; about it.

I did find this with a quick search.

"You are also limited to 5 simultaneous peer network connections."

OK, I see that Basic does support network mapping. Therefore it should do what you want.

Fo now, make sure your router is set for DHCP. All the computer then should pull and IP, subnet, gateway, and DNS from the router. Make sure all are on the same workgroup and it should work. If not then something is setup wrong in the Vista to keep it from see the others systems on the intranet.

Check in Add/Remove programs on the XP computers to make sure they have this update installed (KB922120) it is Link-Layer Topology Discovery, if not you can download and install it from here, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4F01A31D-EE46-481E-BA11-37F485FA34EA&displaylang=en

Okay so.. i was able to access a shared folder that I have on my laptop.. but i am still not able to access the main dekstop computer?
I connected to my laptop by in the explorer just typing in \\Ipaddress
and i found my ip adress by typing in ipconfig in the cmd prompt.
I typed in the ip address for the desktop but it couldnt connect to the dekstop computer from my sisters vista laptop.. so theres the reason why i cant connect to the printer first of all... but why cant it connect to my dekstop computer?
Does this make a difference at all... i noticed that when i typed in ipconfig for my laptop it showed up as

Ethernet adaptor wireless network connection 2:
Ip address - blahblah blah


BUT

when i did ipconfig on my desktop it said...

Ethernet adaptor local area connection:
connection specific DNS suffix:
Ip Adress - blahblahblah

does this make a difference? Cuz if i can just access the folder by typiging in an ip in the broswer ill do it that way... but why wont it work with the current ip address?