My wife has a new laptop with Vista Home Premium. We have a home network (via MS Home) which happily made her old laptop running XP Home SP2 accessible from my laptop (XP Pro SP2) - we could share whatever we wanted, however we wanted. But now I find her new laptop inaccessible. I cannot 'see' my own computer from hers, and certainly not hers from mine. (Though, curiously I have been able to do so once, but no longer) I can gain accessibility via Network Magic - but I'd like to back up her files easily from her machine onto an external drive usb-attached to mine, and I'd like to be able to do this in a simple straightforward manner without using Network Magic, just by using her Accessories, System Tools, Backup etc. But all it shows is 'Network' without the necessary network subfolders. I've tried, without success, to implement 'sharing', under Properties, wherever I have that option.

(It may or may not also be relevant, and a potential complication, that her hard drive came partitioned as C and E (data), while my Laptop sees my external hard drive as E... Further it may or may not be relevant that she is running ZoneAlarm Security Suite and I am running ZoneAlarm Pro - but that did not create a problem with her XP machine).

Seem to have solved part of the problem (don't ask how!) - but it is now asking for a sign-in name and password to implement the backup I want to do - and we've never set this on either machine. Simply hitting Enter to bypass this dialog box doesn't do it... So now what?

OK - so entering the destination computer name and any old password gets me to - 'unable to... etc.. must be co-owner... etc... not XP Home... etc'. But my machine is running XP Pro - same thing? Or how do I implement a 'network share' on an XP Pro machine with a Vista machine.

I don't know if it's getting better or worse...

Both computers must have the same work group name for starters.

Then, although there may be a workaround for this in group policy editing -- make sure the User Name and Password for both Profiles is the same.

If you have not set a password on one or other of the systems -- do it for both.

This is usually the trick that works best.

If XP computer has trouble "seeing" the Vista computer on the network -- go to Windows Search on the Start Menu and search for the Vista computer name under "computers or people"