I have finally navigated the minefield of networking a Vista (Home Premium) and an XP (Home) based PC but I am having one final problem. The only files on the XP PC that I am allowed to access from my Vista PC are the ones in the shared folder. I can open all of the subfolders everywhere else but once I get down to actual files I get an error message that basically says I can't acces the files and to contact the network administrator. Since I'm the administrator I've hit a dead end. I have turned on sharing for the entire XP PC's C: drive but that didn't change anything. The XP PC can't access any files on the Vista PC other than the ones in the shared folder either (same problem going the other way). There must be a way to access the files over the network without moving everything to the shared folder first. Any thoughts or suggestions?

you must have on both machines the same username with a matching password. no blank password, mind.

So if I am trying to access my daughter's files on the XP PC from the Vista PC I have to be logged on to her desktop profile on both machines? That just seems absurd! What am I thinking, of couse it's absurd, it's Microsoft.

Thanks for the tip.

well, I have two computers here, on both the admin user is DimaYasny and the password is 1234. That way I have admin access to both machines from the other one, even to the hidden shares (c$ etc)