I think ive disabled the firewalls and checked before...maybe not thoroughly, but im too scared to fiddle around with the settings again..lol...the closest i can get this to work is (after trying so many different ways of setting up the connection)

*Setting up a home network, starting the process on the laptop.

The best this achieves is the ability to copy files to the laptop from the desktop PC, by dragging files into the shared documents laptop folder from my desktop PC (what i was aiming for was just viewing files from the desktop PC)...guess i will have to settle for this..it is getting too troublesome.

Thanks for your help though guys,

James