Member Panel

I am way out of my league and appreciate any assistance with my networking problem!
It all started with me wanting to wirelessly share the cable modem attached to my husband’s PC running Vista. My laptop is running XP. So I bought a Linksys WRT54G2 wireless broadband router and hooked it up to the PC, along with a Linksys WUSB11 v 2.6 wireless adapter. I bought a Linksys WPC100 Range Plus wireless notebook adapter and put it in the laptop.
The result was that I was able to connect to the internet, but for the life of me, I can’t share the files or printer on the Vista PC.
I can see the PC’s name on the laptop’s My Network Places>View Workgroups, but when I click on the name, it’s not accessible > the network path was not found.
I have made the change on the laptop from "MSHOME" to "WORKGROUP"; turned "Password Protected Sharing" OFF in the Vista Network and Sharing Center (everything else is ON); and right-clicked on selected folders to SHARE.
That’s it! That’s as much as I dare to do on my own. I don’t know if it’s even possible to share the HP 5610 printer. I suppose I should be happy just being able to go on-line, but I sure would like to share files and be able to print.

Hello and welcome to PCHelpForum.

I am afraid I am unable to help on your technical issues.However we have a great technical team who will help you with your problem.

Please be patient help will be forth coming.

Windows is pretty tedious when it comes to network file sharing. You can, however, do it directly from run if you so wish (and I recall one situation in the past where for some reason this was the only way that a client could access the shared folders on another PC).

Just type \\[computer name] in run.

Thanks for the suggestions.
DIIRE: I added the laptop name to the PC users but it didn't work.
Chris Down: I attempted to Run \\<computer name> but got the message: The network path was not found.

I am troubled by the fact that my laptop appears to automatically connect to the network now. Have I created another problem?

Windows often sets networks that it has a ok connection to to connect automatically. Thus, it is probably not a problem at all.

Have you tried the \\[computer name] command from both machines?

Otherwise, you might want to take a look here.

You need to also check the permissions on the folders and make sure that the Administrators group has access. If also won't hurt to add your xp laptops username to the list either.

To do this - right click the folder you are trying to access. Click Properties. Select the Security tab. Make sure Administrators and your xp username have full access to folder and files.