Microsoft Networking an Oxymoron?

By all the accounts I've read, setting up basic networking - file sharing - is a breeze on Windows XP; highlight the file to share, tick the box for "share this folder" and - bam - it's shared with your network (actually, your workgroup since one of your three computers is stuck with XP Home, one has XP Pro, and one has XP media center - which appears to be more Pro than Home edition).

Only, that ain't so. I started from the proverbial clean slate, and now, when I go to check the shared folder on the XP Home system, the XP Pro system can see it, but the XP media center cannot, and just says either access denied, or the folder isn't valid. The converse is also true, XP Home cannot access the shared folder on XP MC.

Any thoughts, ideas - I'm runnning simple file sharing, so there shouldn't be any issue with per-user security ('cause it don't exist in simple sharing, which is what I'm limited to on account of the XP Home system).

EDIT: Also, yes, they all appear to be joined to the same workgroup (I say "appear" because it seems that XP MCE has a lot more XP-Pro bits under the hood, and when I captured some traffic with network monitor, it looked like it was trying to find a domain instead of a workgroup)

 

Have you ran the set up a home network wizard?

 

Microsoft Works

thats the best oxymoron ive ever heard. the program itself is actually fine

btw do you have the latest updates? sp3 perhaps?

 

Several times

 

Ahh.., yup, on all three.

 

You might be running in to the "ForceGuest" thing with XP.

Look here in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

Change "ForceGuest" to 0 (ZERO)

That is assuming you are getting a login box but it just keeps failing repeatedly even with the correct credentials.

 

I'll give that a try. Thanks. The main trouble seems to be that the XP Pro system and the XP MCE system keep giving each other access-denied/no permission errors, or errors stating that the resource in question is either not available or is not valid. I suspect that it might be related to the fact that the XP Home system can only do simple file sharing, but the XP Pro and (I think) the XP MCE can do ... I'll call it complicated file sharing as well.

At any rate, I'm tempted to just take it all down right now, reset to defaults on each system, remove the current workgroup, and start over again - that or I might just drop the $100 or so it'll take to get an upgrade copy of XP Pro off of eBay; that way I can at least get rid of the XP Home version.

 

http://tweakhound.com/xp/xpperm/xpPerm1.htm

 

Yowza! That looks like it could be a very fruitful link; thanks! I'll see what happens with it when I get home.

EDIT: O.K., double yowza! That site is chockful of good stuff! I'd rep more if I could. I don't recall if that site's been stickied in the appropriate Windows OS forum, but it sure would be a nice addition.

 

Glad to help Shyster1.

Google is an amazing site.