Why is it so hard to make a desktop and a laptop talk to eachother?

[corksil]

Hello, apologies if this has been posted, I searched to no avail.

It is the simplest question, atleast it seems that it should be, but I cannot for the life of me answer it. How do you network a laptop and a desktop? I know pretty much what I am doing, I would say I have some networking experience.

I have a laptop with XP Professional installed on it, and a desktop with XP Home on it. They are connected through a router, the desktop is plugged in, and the laptop is on wireless G. The computers both get their internet connections from the router. They are on the same workgroup, and they can both be seen when you click on "show workgroup computers." I have run windoze network setup wizard on both machines, multiple times trying different things. I have tried switching workgroups, plugging both into the router at the same time, enabling and disabling software firewalls. I have messed with windoze firewall, and and tried multiple configurations, and ultimately left it off entirely. I have file and print sharing enabled on both computers, allowing users to change/edit my files on each. I have active shares going on each computer, and a printer shared on the desktop. I have messed with the registry enabling or disabling the guest account, requiring passwords and not requiring passwords.

My testing and fiddling has yielded no results, at best I can see each computer in the "workgroup" view. When I try to access either computer from the other, I get about a 10 second delay, and a "WORKGROUP\\CORKSILVAIOLT\ cannot be accessed" message or something like that. No such luck.

What is the obscure box that I am forgetting to check, how can I make these computers talk to eachother? It irritated me and I tried to live without networking them, but it has been only a week and I want my music off of the desktop... Can anyone help me?

Thanks for replies in advance.

[AnotherMuggle]

It certainly shouldn't be that difficult!

All computers on my home network can access one another seemlessly through the router...I didn't even need to configure the Network Settings. Just connected the machines to the router and they could straight off talk to one another.

Sorry I'm unable to offer any advise.

[mbossman2]

One thing that always seems to be a gotcha is: make sure that the 802.1 authentication box is not checked in the network adapter's property box. that might explain the delay, the adpater is looking for an authorization server, not finding one and defaulting to "no access"

tom is right, it should not be that difficult...

[Panama Red]

See if this helps.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=165490