file sharing between computers...

[buford]

hello all you happy people in PCMech land.

I have two computers connected to a lynksys cable/DSL router with four port switch (model BEFSR41), which are in turn connected to a lynksys ethernet cable modem (model BEFCMU10).

computer No. 1 is a desktop running Windows 98 second edition.
Computer No. 2 is a Toshiba satellite laptop running Windows XP home edition.

both computers are able to connect to the Internet (at the same time no less!)

I'm trying to be able to send and receive files and shared a printer which is hooked to the desktop.

neither computer is able to see the other, and the laptop is unable to detect the printer.

When I set up the configurations on the laptop it said it was turning on the Windows firewall. After reading some previous posts in this section, I get the impression that this is a bad thing. How do I turn it off?

any other suggestions would be helpful. I have about 5 GB of data on the laptop that needs to migrate over to the desktop.

[TennBikeBerk]

Make sure the files you want to share are "shared" and that your printer is "shared" too.

Open up "My Network Places" and tell me what you see.

[buford]

on the laptop it doesn't show anything

on the desktop network neighborhood shows 2 icons:
"entire network" which when opened is empty
"desktop" which when opened shows "shareddocs" folder which in turn contains a jpg file i was using as a tester

[mbossman2]

back to basics:

Does each PC have their own unique names?
Do all PC's belong to the same workgroup name?
Is the XP firewall turned off?
Is file and print sharing turned on?
Are the PC's set to automatically obtain IP addresses?
Turn off 802.1x security.

All of this is under the networking tabs for their respective operating systems

[buford]

in reply to mbossman2

yes: each computer has a unique name (Desktop1, and Laptop1)
yes: both pc's are in the MSHOME work group
yes: i did figure out how to turn off the xp firewall (although each computer has it's own firewall)
yes: i did turn on file and print sharing
yes: the PC's are set to automatically obtain IP addresses; my ip address is dynamic so i had to set up this way

last question: (Turn off 802.1x security) not familliar with this - please elaborate