File and Printer Shareing Problem

[Mikecool509]

Hello.
I have a wireless network that my brother and i both use. We both use wireless network cards to access the router on our dad's comuter, so that we can share the dsl. Everything works, we can all use the internet connection, and my brother and i can play games with the games lan option. The problem that i have is that i can not share files and printers between my brother's and my computers. I have enabled shareing of printers and files on both computers, and configured both the windows firewall and zone alarm properly on both computers. My computer name, Mike, shows up in addition to my brothers', Alex, on both computers. However, when i try to access "alex" from my computer, or "mike" from alex's computer, i get an error that says that the computer is offline or unavailable. I pinged the router, and alex's computer from both his and my computers, and gotten responses back. However, when i send a ping request to my computer from either computer, the request times out. I think that some setting is not right on my computer, but i don't know what. I really want my brother to be able to use my pdf printer, but i can't seem to get it working. Thanks for your help! :cool:

[DMR]

The first thing to do when troubleshooting suh a problem is to disable all firewalls entirely. Keep in mind that simply choosing the "disable" or "exit" option from a firewall's menu often does not shut the firewall down all together; you need to deselect the option that causes the firewall to automatically starts when Windows starts up, and then reboot the computer

[Mikecool509]

I did try and disable zone alarm on both computers, and it did allow printer and file shareing. However, I don't want to leave my firewall off. Any ideas as to how I should configure ZoneAlarm, or what program is be blocked by the firewall. I think it might be svchost, but i'm not sure. Thanks. And one more question. I have adobe acrobat installed on my computer, and I added the pdf printer to my brothers computer, but when i try and print something with it, i get an error that says that no printer is installed or that i need to install drivers. Any ideas, or can i not share a pdf printer? Thanks!