XP / Vista home network

[St3v3boy]

Hi,

I had previously given up on my home network. previously I had a desktop, and two laptops running on XP. I introduced a Vista laptop, but was unable to print or share documents. I have now heard that the XP and Vista are compatible. Can someone point me in the right direction please?

Ideally, I will have a XP desktop and hard drive back up for file storage and print services. One XP based laptop, Xbox and a vista laptop also need to be added.

I'm not looking for any miracles, but the ability to share music, pictures and documents, as well as print services would be most helpful. I also want to add a security camera, but have issues transmitting the images, but that is another issue.

Can anyone offer any advice on how to get the machines connected?

[Suspishio]

You buy a cheap switch that you can attach also to a router port for the internet. This switc will act as a LAN to the PCs and printer(s) connected to it.

You would let Control Panel/Printers discover your network printer and the driver will need to be installed on each PC on the LAN.

Sharing files is best dome by adding a NAS drive to one of the ports on the switch. It can then be seen by drivers you install on each PC.

Alternatively you can set any directory in PC to be shared across the LAN. Other PCs need to know the workgroup and PC name of everything else so that other PC users can access a directory in a different PC's hard disk.

The details of how to do all these steps can, of course, be Googled.

OK?