I have 1 XP desktop, 1 Vista desktop, 2 Vista laptops & 1 network external hard drive. The 2 laptops are on the network, but they don't see the external hard drive. The vista desktop gave no problems.

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Are they all in the same Workgroup?

If they are in the same workgroup (required for "browsing" the network), are the laptops getting an IP address?

If yes, you can do a START | RUN and type

\\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

and see if that pulls up the external HDD.

If that doesn't work, can they ping the external HDD?
Can they ping anything?
Can they get out to the internet?

Unless the laptops have been configured to have browsing turned off (registry hack) you should eventually see the external HDD if the windows XP machine can see it.

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