Networking help

[Lee]

I have a desktop and a laptop hooked up to a Linksys router. Both computers can get on the net fine, but I can not for the life of me to get them to see each other. I have tried running the XP netowk wizzard multipe times trying different settings and tried to manually add the computers to "network places" but to no luck.

Can anyone give me some newbie advice (I used to have a network that ran fine over a year ago but I seemed to forgot whatever I did know.) Or maybe point me to a place where I can get some tips please?

Thanks for any help.

[Destructor]

Personally, I never had any issues getting this to work. However...

Are both PC's running the same OS (WinXP prefered)? If they're WinXP, then all you need to do is this:

On the folders/drives you want to share, open up Explorer, Right Click the folder, and select Properties. From there, click on the Sharing tab, then click on both the 'Share this folder on the network' and 'Allow network users to change my files'.

In theory (at least for me), it worked great.

In addition, if you select this on a drive, it makes the entire drive available. WinXP will pause for a bit if you select this big of a 'folder' to make share enabled, but it'll come out of it and work fine afterwards.

[egrudzin]

I have been doing PC tech support for 6+ years now and I still have problems getting Windows networking to work right (I call it "Microsoft Notworking").  Here's some other stuff to try:

-Make sure all PCs are in the same workgroup.  Right click My Computer and click Properties.  Click the Computer Name tab at the top.  You can change it from here.

-If on XP make sure both PCs have the same user account with the same password.  If both PCs are logged in with the same user Windows should let you connect with no password prompt.

-Sometimes the "Network Places" thing doesn't work.  You can do a search for the computer on the network with the Search tool or click Start then Run and type "\\computername" where computername is the name of the computer you want to connect to (don't use quotes).  If it works you should get an explorer Window with the contents of that computer.

-Rebooting all the PCs sometimes gets them talking again.  Maybe it resets some network stuff or something.  I've had this work a few times.

[Destructor]

I have been doing PC tech support for 6+ years now and I still have problems getting Windows networking to work right (I call it "Microsoft Notworking").  Here's some other stuff to try:

-Make sure all PCs are in the same workgroup.  Right click My Computer and click Properties.  Click the Computer Name tab at the top.  You can change it from here.

I knew there was something else I was missing as far as getting PCs to talk to one another. And that was it.

Thanks for the addendum, egrudzin.

Windows Networking is such a pain, and it really shouldn't...

[Lee]

Sorry for the slow reply.

Just wanted to thank you guys for your help.

Egrudzin hit the nail on the head. Network Places the computers couldn't find each other, but using XP's search function worked great.

Thanks for your help guys, sorry for being so slow with feedback.