I am extremely frustrated at this point, to the point of almost giving up. I have followed countless bits of advice from other similar posts...read hundreds of pages of text from the microsoft support forums and have had no success. PLEASE someone help me. I will describe, in detail, the problems I am having. ANY suggestions would be appreciated. 1. I have a business that I own and manage myself. I have an existing network of 7 hard wired desktops of various age all running XP or XP Pro. I have 1 wireless laptop running XP pro that connects to the network via a wireless router (set up as an access point) plugged into the main switch which is plugged into the router. 2. About a year ago, I purchased a Vista laptop for personal use. I now want to use it at my business. 3. Three days ago I received a new Windows 7 laptop for use at my business. Remember, the existing 8 computers (actually 9, if you count the windows based pc in one of the machines in the shop) ALL WORK FLAWLESSLY. They can share printers, share files, explore each other intimately...whatever...it works. I have 10 printers that all work great that are connected to various PC's around the shop also. All are local printers that are shared. PC's stay power-on all the time. The Vista laptop arrived a few months ago and connected to the internet just fine through the wireless access point (after entering encryption key). It does not see any other computers on the network despite being a member of the same workgroup. I was too busy to worry about it and just left it as a home computer and took it home. The W7 laptop is an absolute necessity here. I need to be able to connect it to our network and join all the other computers and printers. I have tried all of the normal stuff. Here is what I have done so far: On the W7 laptop: -made sure not to use homegroup -changed advanced sharing settings to what they should be On the XP laptop, I installed the Link Layer Topology something or other. Why should I have to do this? This is my first BIG complaint. Why should I have to install ANYTHING on my existing network? Why isn't W7 backward compatible with existing technology that's already in use out there? But whatever, fine. I installed that. I did a bunch of other "messing around" settings to no avail and returned everything back to normal (besides the aforementioned installation of link layer blah blah blah). So...after that's all done here is where I am at. When I open the network and sharing center in W7, and view the network map, I can SEE the XP laptop, but when I open an explorer window and select "network" it's not there. In the network map I see the W7 laptop, the Vista laptop, the XP laptop, connected to the wireless network named "OURNETWORK" which is connected to the gateway which is connected to the internet. At the bottom of the network map, it says "the following discovered device(s) can not be placed in the map. Click here to see all other devices. Under that, it shows my wireless router (again, being used only in access point mode). When I click "here" It takes me to the network view. I ONLY see the W7 laptop and the Vista Laptop under "Computers (2)" Under Network Infrastructure, I see my wireless router AND the residential gateway (listed separately). The "router" that is listed is my wireless router (which is functioning as an access point, or wireless switch only). When I log into my router (192.168.0.1) and look at all of the currently connected devices, I see everything. People's iPhones, our machines, time clock...everything that has an IP address on our network. When I go to My network places on any of the XP machines, I see ONLY the XP machines. Yes, I have created a shared folder on the W7 machine. I am totally frustrated and feel like giving up. I scream at the commercials for Windows 7. I was SO expecting to just connect to the network and automatically see all the shared folders on all the PC's. Can somebody please help? Thanks

In general 99% of the network discovery issues is due to firewall configurations. Be sure the Windows Vista and Windows 7 devices are NOT configured to use "public" network settings. You can verify and change this in the "network and sharing center" Your wireless network should be configured here as being a "home" or "work" network. If it is not, click it to change.This will configure the firewalls to allow network discovery. This is the part that uses the "Link layer topology" thing you mentioned. This not a needed component on XP, but should make the integration of XP and 7 easier: it allows detecting XP clients on a Vista/7 computer and it allows Vista/7 to see more advanced networking configurations using XP computers. However, even without any network "discovery", you should be able to browse the shares and printers using the UNC path (\\servername\share). Please verify that and let me know the results! MCSA/MCTS/MCP

Yeah, I've tried it as a home network and as a work network. Nothing. I keep thinking that there has got to be something simple. A radio button in some obscure setting that is preventing everyone from communicating. I have gone as far as disconnecting the cable modem, then closing and disabling all firewalls, all AVS programs and any other security measures, and still nothing. It HAS to be something simple. I mean, my W7 pc recognizes that it is connected to the network. It browses the web just fine, it shows the other XP pc in the network map view, but that's all it does.

try to browse to the shares via the UNC path (\\servername\share) and see what error you get pleaseMCSA/MCTS/MCP

Hi, Here are some suggestions you can try: 1. Temporarily disable firewall on each machine and assure they are in the same subnet. 2. Assure the following services are started on each machine: Computer Browser, Server, Workstation 3. Modify relevant settings on Windows 7 machine. a. Click Start and open Control Panel. b. Open "Network and Sharing Center" and click "Advanced sharing settings". c. Expand the current network profile (such as "Home or Work"), and then select the following options: "Turn on Network Discovery", "Turn on file and printer sharing", "Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can read and write files in the Public folders", "Turn off password protected sharing" 4. Write down the IP address for Windows XP. Click Start button in Windows 7 and type \\XP IP address, and then press enter. Can you access the Windows XP computer? Thanks, Novak