File Sharing Problem

[mike]

We have a desktop and a laptop computer. Both are running with W XP
Home Edition. The desktop is connected to a router with an Ethernet
cable and the router is connected to a cable modem which gets the
desktop out to the WWW. The laptop is able to get to WWW wireless. All
of this works fine.
We are having trouble 'file sharing'. By file sharing I mean, I
want to be able to access a file that resides on the desktop from the
laptop. And vice versa. To accomplish this I have used Windows Explorer
and selected a folder in My Documents. I then right click on the folder
and select sharing and security. On the sharing tab I select Share This
Folder On The Network, then Apply and OK. The drop down menu closes and
there is no error message. At this time I am assuming the folder has
been set up to be 'shared' by the other computer.
Now when I go to the other computer I am unable to find the shared
folder. I do not know if I did something wrong when I shared the
folder, in this example on the desktop, or if I am doing something on
the reading computer, the laptop.
TIA.

 

[frodo]

yes, it can be daunting to get file sharing working the way you want;

three tips:

1) open Help and Support and read up in File Sharing; note that in XP Home
only SIMPLE FILE SHARING is available. Understand it; it may not seem so
simple!

2) google for "XP Simple Filesharing" and read a little more. In a
nutshell, only items held in the Shared Documents folder get shared, WITH
ANYONE AT ALL.

3) if you can't "see" the contents of the remote machine's Shared
Documents folder then you do have an issue; try running the Network Setup
Wizzard on BOTH machines - it will almost always fix things up so that
file sharing will start to work. Pay particular attention to the
WORKGROUP NAME screen in the wizzard - it always tries to change it back
to MSHOME; whatever name you choose it must be the same on both machines.

Note that binding netBios to the network connection will make computer
browsing much smoother - even tho it presents a slight security risk and
it is often reccomended to unbind it. W/O netBios it often takes MINUTES
for shared asssets to appear when browsing the workgroup, a real pain that
often leads to people to think it isn't setup right, when what's really
wrong is it needs more time to find things out there...

Good Luck...