I had the same problem which took me a while to fix....
1. I made sure that I had shared folders in Vista appropriately
- made them available to 'Everyone' just in case that helped
2. I made sure the 'Network discovery', 'File Sharing', and 'Public Folder
Sharing' options in the Network and Sharing Center window were set to 'On'
3. I turned the Windows Firewall off on both the serving Vista machine and
the client XP machine.
4. Came to this message board and tried everything listed here that I could
find
- making sure a Guest acct was created and enabled on both machines
- making sure they were both on a workgroup with the same name
- turned on Full Access in the Folder(s) I wanted shared (although
this is not really what I wanted, just read only is what I wanted)
After all that, still had the same problem, I could access my XP Home
Machine from Vista (5600), but when I went to the XP Home Machine, I would
double-click the Vista machine icon in the workgroup and it would return a
permission error.
My solution turned out to be simple. I was just staring at the Network and
Sharing Center in a semi-dazed state and saw that the option for "Password
Protected Sharing' was turned on and I suddenly realized what that item meant
-- that turning it on was an extra measure of security, not enabling another
type of sharing (as the other sharing options above all are) -- so I turned
it off and was able to access things fine.
I'm not sure why my XP home machine did not simply ask for authentication
when that option is turned on, maybe someone else knows, but for now I will
just leave it off. Perhaps the key to that explanation lies in the
description of the option in Vista which says: "When password protection is
turned on, only people who have a user account and password on this computer
can access shared files, printers attached to this computer, and the Public
folder. To give other people access, you must turn off password protection."
- Marc
PS: Note to the user experience folks for Vista...I'd recommend changing
the name of that option to avoid confusion. Perhaps changing it from
'Password protected sharing' to something like 'Password protection for
shared items' would be a better differentiator from the other 'Sharing' type
options in the same list. Or, if indeed the way I read the explantion for
the option is actually correct, that it is not really adding password
protection at all but simply denying access to non-local users, than the
option name is ridiculous as it is and really should be changed! 'Local
sharing only' maybe??
