Member Avatar for 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?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Suspishio

Dani AI

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Short primer for getting XP and Vista to see each other (and to troubleshoot common failures). described the goal and pointed toward making the networked devices reachable; once devices are physically on the same LAN the usual blockers are Windows settings, name resolution, credentials and firewalls. The checklist below focuses on those OS-level items so XP and Vista can share files, media and printers reliably.

Start by proving basic connectivity. Open a command prompt and run:

ipconfig /all
ping <other-PC-IP-address>
net view \\<other-PC-IP-address>

If ping by IP works but names do not, enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP and make sure the "Computer Browser", "Server" and "Workstation" services are running. That fixes most visibility/name-resolution issues on mixed XP/Vista networks.

On Vista, set the network to a private/work profile and turn on Network Discovery and File and Printer Sharing in Network and Sharing Center. On XP check the network adapter properties include "Client for Microsoft Networks" and "File and Printer Sharing" and, if using XP Home, be aware Simple File Sharing affects permission behavior. Where access requires authentication, either create matching local user accounts (same username/password) on both machines or disable password-protected sharing on the machine that’s meant to be open.

Firewalls and third-party security suites commonly block sharing. Temporarily disable them to test. Also enable exceptions for File and Printer Sharing and for Windows Media Player if streaming to an Xbox (the Xbox uses UPnP/DLNA so the PC must be allowed to advertise media). For printing, check the host PC’s shared-printer permissions if clients cannot print. For network cameras, prefer the camera’s built-in streaming/FTP features or vendor software rather than trying to push images through Windows file shares.

Member Avatar for 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?

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