Hello everyone I am new to this forum and I have been pulling my hair out for 24 hours regarding a certain problem I am having with networking. I am not a professional IT but I have limited education regarding windows platforms and I know my way around these systems fairly well. It seems that every time a new platform is released for Microsoft their network protocols change yet again, and headaches upon headaches result from that. Anyway, here is my problem/solution (so far). This is a mix of extremely well researched and tested suggestions for those who are having problems with this issue, and a deeper question into my own problem.Getting Vista (I have V Home Premium) to network with windows XP machines is no easy task. Everyone will tell you to do certain things with your firewall, change port settings, etc.. As far as firewalls go, the 2 big ones out there that really seem to jam up V -> XP networking are Norton and McAfee. I don't use either, and I have turned all firewall/antivirus/security programs running on my systems, to no avail. So here is what I did.I added a new vista machine to our current network. We have had the computer for nearly a year but just in the last couple of days decided to network them. We have shuffled the comps around in our house and now it is necessary to share one of our printers on the network. The machine that this printer is connected to is a XP Home edition, with SP3 recently installed (as of today that is) and with the new LLTD protocol installed. I also have an XP Pro machine (also with SP 3 and LLTD) which seems to communicate perfectly with the Vista machine. Here are the steps I took and some tips for those of you who are running XP Pro:-Follow the guides stating how to configure your network settings in Vista-Ensure that all the computers are on the same workgroup. Changing your work group is easy, and on both XP and Vista machines, open control panel, open the 'system' icon, and under "computer name" you will see options as to how to changeyour workgroup.-Download and install the LLTD (tcp/ip 6 protocol). This protocol is found easily by doing a google search for LLTD tcp/ip 6. NOTE: Once you download this and try to install, if it says "This protocol is already installed on this computer" but your XP Pro machine is NOT connecting to the vista machine, then what you need to do is open Control Panel, open Network Connections, right click on the connection tied to your network card, click Properties, and in the new window click Install (button located in the middle of the general tab), double click Protocols, and double click TCP/IP 6. This will install the new tcp/ip protocol on your XP machine that will allow you to communicate with your vista machine.-Open My Computer, click Tools, Folder Options. In the View tab, scroll to the bottom of the list and enable "Simple Networking". For some reason this is only available for XP Pro, not Home, and I believe this is what prevents XP Home from allowing the Vista machine to properly connect to it.-Disable your firewall, antivirus, and security programs that might block a port. There is much documentation online on how to do this.-Ensure that all computers have at least one share available on them, that is, you have at least one folder on each computer that is shared and available to the network. For XP Pro, this is very simple, as the simple networking protocol takes care of the permission settings for you, as opposed to XP Home, which imo is USELESS when it comes to networking.-If you still can't see your vista machine with the XP Pro computer, and you have installed the protocols provided by microsoft, your other option might now be on the vista machine. Open the Network window (icon found on desktop) and at the top of that window there should be a "network and sharing" button. Click that. You will see some options toward the bottom of the page. Make sure Network Discovery, File Sharing, Public Folder Sharing and Printer Sharing are all enabled. I have the other 2 turned off (tried the turn them on but made no difference to my issue).-So far, following these steps, your XP Pro and Vista Home machines should be able to communicate with eachother without issue. You should be able to share resources and if you can't, and you run Norton or McAfee, then now is the time to phone their tech support and ask them how to enable the port your vista machine uses to access your XP machine. Otherwise, with theLLTD alone being properly installed (remember, if you already have it, then add it as a protocol), then your XP Pro machine should work like a charm.It has taken me 24 solid hours (no kidding) of scouring the internet and looking at posts to get this far. My Vista and XP Pro machines actually WORK as far as networking goes. So now back to my issue, and my question, and well, I hope like ____, the answer to this mess. What I really wanted to do to begin with was connect with my XP Home machine. I have followed the same steps as I did with the XP pro machine and what has happened is that my XP Home machine can see the shares on my Vista machine easily. I can access, transfer, modify and do whatever I want with the shares using the XP machine. But, when I get onto the vista machine, all I can do is look at my XP Home machine on the network pane,and when I double click the machine in network view it seems to lag out and produce an error that I may have misspelled my network share, or that the IP address is bad. When I try to ping the machine through cmd or access the network share, it says that it could not ping the machine. So my Vista machine SEE'S my XP Home machine, but CANNOT access it! But when I log into my XP Home machine, I can see the Vista machine without problem, and do whatever I want with the shares no problem! Also, my Vista machine shows my XP Pro machine and has no issue with with accessing resources! So my issue lies with XP Home!So, for all you XP Home users out there, the answer to this question will solve everyone's problem. What is it about XP Pro that allows it to communicate effectively with the Vista machine, that the XP Home machine doesn't have? Why can XP Pro network easily and properly and the XP Home machine is such a pain? What do I have to tweakon my Home machine that will allow it to send a ping to my vista machine? Please someone help me with this issue. I have tried everything on the XP Home machine from messing around with the guest account (apparently it's important for networking on XP Home) to logging in on safe mode as admin and messing around with permissions, to completely refreshing all my networking protocols, to even upgrading from SP2 to SP3! There is some little thing about XP Home that needs to be tweaked so it will either send it's ping info out to the network, or will allow the ping request in from Vista. If this issue ever gets solved, then everyones problem will be solved once and for all, aside from firewall and protocol issues. It seems that everyone running XP Pro is able to finally get their machine to communicate, while everyone running XP Home is left in the dark. And believe me, I have probably read over 100 forum posts regarding this issue. Thank you for helping me on this. I hope someone is able to set up a small test network environment and figure this out.

OK here is an update. I started doing a search to see if there was anything I was missing on my XP Home system and I found out after reading several posts that XP Home randomly does this to most other OS's as well. The differences between Pro and Home are just too vast, and even though most computers talk on the tcp/ip protocol, the way that protocol is handled by the kernel is what seems to be the issue here. One thing I did try though was I went into add/remove programs,opened the windows componentslist and looked through them. This was suggested by something I read. I added:Management and Monitoring -Simple Networking Management Protocol -WMI SNMP ProviderNetworking Services -Peer to Peer -Simple tcp/ip servicesThose were all added to my comp, and didn't seem to make any difference. I uninstalled and re-installed all my protocols. Rebooted several times. My networking issue is persisting and I'm still at a loss. I dont' want to give up on thislittle problem I am havingbecause it's pretty important, but I'm starting to wonder about my options now. Some theories I have about why XP Home blocks out some computers:Guest Account/User Accounts: Apparently sometimes in XP Home you need to set up user accounts for the computers that connect to it. I'm not sure what this is about but I do know that when I trained on Windows NT, the office computer had to login as a certain user. That user also had to be created on the server machine, so that the office machine could connect across the network and log in with the user data that was currently logged onto it. Using this scheme, all users on all computers need to be placed on a list on the server. This works well in a large network, because there can be a vast list of user accounts. This seems way to complicated a protocol for XP Home to handle, butthey suggest that youshould have all accounts of all computers listed in *each* computer on your peer to peer network. They say this is the "cure" but it didn't cure mine. Also, something to do with the guest account being enabled is supposed to allow a generic network connection access network resources on the xp home machine. I tried this as well. Didn't work. Keep in mind that I never had these problems going from my xp pro to my xp home machines, and I've never had to use user access rights to any home machine (pro or home) I've ever used on a PtP network.Simple Networking: This was something as you saw above that I could apparently install and have an easier time networknig. I believed it to be one of my issues. But as I said I installed it and it didn't solve my problem either, although I did see a change in some of the tabs used by the network properties window. The only thing about this is that I don't see it when I open the 'view' tab in folder options for my computer. So it's there, but not like it is with XP Pro.Microsoft Programming Issues: XP Home simply is not a proper networking platform. Even to use as a home system is kindof rediculous because you are so limited to a lot of things like security and protocols (communication). To have a guest account determine how an incoming network connection is handled is highly risky and also just stupid. Even back in the NT days people would have laughed at the notion of it. But XP Home seems to use the guest account for nearly every networking aspect, including some things you do over the internet. Also, XP Home cannot join a domain, and being on a domain is where the whole username and password bit comes in anyway. But without being on a domain, some network protocols just will not work, or will be sporratic at best.Until the XP Home protocol kernal is up to par with the Pro kernal, I feel that Imighthave to live with the fact that this particular vista machine will never connect tothe XP Homemachine. And that is something that disappoints me. PtP networking should be something that is easy to configure, on any machine microsoft sells, and not have to worry about how one version of their OS software handles networking COMPLETELY differently than another version of the same software. All that stuff should be universal and the same, across all XP machines and hopefully Vista. I have high hopes for Vista with this new protocol (LLTD). I'm sure it will be used for years to come, but as far as backward compatibility goes, I wish it was as easy now as it was back in the windows 98 days, when netbeui would allow any machine access to PtP networking without a problem.