# I can't get my laptop and desktop to share files, and it's driving me insane!



## Unit Twentyfive (Oct 7, 2008)

Greetings!

I told myself that today would be the day that I just buckled down, stuck to it, and finally figured out how to share files between my laptop and my desktop. It didn't work.

I have a high-speed connection coming into the house, where it then goes through a D-Link router. There are 6 machines in our house connecting to this router, but only the first three are really relevant to me;

-1 XP desktop, wireless (computer name "Spidey")
-1 Vista laptop, wireless (computer name "Joe-XPS")
-1 Xbox 360, wired
-2 other Vista laptops, wireless
-1 XP desktop, wired (hardly used)

All of these devices connect to the internet successfully. 

The Xbox 360 is able to read and pay media (videos and music) from the 1st Vista laptop (Spidey) without any problems. 

I cannot, no matter what I try, get the 1st XP desktop (Spidey) and the 1st Wireless XP Desktop (Joe-XPS) to share files. 

I have created a workgroup for them, to which they are both connected (called "WORKGROUP"), and I can see Joe-XPS in the "vie workgroup computers" list on the desktop machine, but I can't see the Spidey machine on the Vista laptop's Network screen. Some configurations over the course of the day have had this backwards (seeing Spidey on Joe-XPS) and nonexistant (seeing neither on either). 

I've messed around with everything I can think of, I've tried following as many "set up your home network" tutorials as I could find, but no matter what I've done, the only constant is that I can't get the two to connect to one another. 

When I do get one showing up in the other's network/workgroup list, I click on it and after a few minutes it says, 

"\\Joe-xps is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of the server to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found."​
I have both systems set up to share their files, and can click on that system's own icon in the workgroup to see which folders are shared. 

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. 
Thanks!

~Joe


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Hello,

Please verify your setup from here. Disable any Firewalls (windows and software) for now.


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## Unit Twentyfive (Oct 7, 2008)

Hi 2xgrump, thanks for replying. 

In the few minutes since you wrote, you've fixed about 75% of what I've spent all day trying to figure out. Thanks!! Turns out that while I did disable the 3rd party firewalls on my computer, my laptop had been 'secretly' running Windows Firewall as well. 

I disabled that, and now I can see both computers on each other's network page, plus, I can actually use the laptop to get files off of my desktop computer. 

I still can't access the laptop from the desktop though, and I can't send files from the laptop to the desktop. I've double-checked that the folder I want to share from the laptop IS enabled to share to "everyone" and "guest", and I have it setup for sharing without a password, but I still can't get the desktop to access the laptop.

Any ideas on this one?
Thanks!


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

--Verify that Workgroup Name is all the same.

--Make sure that Netbios is enabled on all your computers. Here's how in XP and in Vista.

--Create a User Account on all your computers with the same User and Password.

--Double check that File/Print Sharing is enabled.

--Turn off password protected sharing from your Vista Computers, do the following: 
1. In the Sharing and Discovery section of the Network and Sharing Center window, click the down arrow next to Password protected sharing. 
2. Within the Password protected sharing settings, click Turn off password protected sharing, and then click Apply.


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## Unit Twentyfive (Oct 7, 2008)

I have verified the workgroup name, the netbios is enabled on both computers, the file/print sharing is enabled, and the sharing is not password protected. 

The computers DID have two different username/passwords (in fact, on the desktop computer, there was no password at all). 

I did change that so that they are both the same now (same name, no password), but it didn't change anything in terms of being able to access the folders/files.

BEFORE I changed the login/pass info, I tried "sharing" the laptop's "guest" account, and without any other changes, it worked! I can access the laptop's guest account from the desktop computer. I have made sure that the settings are the same for both the guest account and the user-account that I want shared, and they are the same. I still can't get the desktop to open the folder. 

One thing that does seem odd, is that when I go into the desktop's "view workgroup computers" window, it shows the Laptop's name there "Joe-XPS" and when I click on that, I see a list of the shared resources on the Laptop. Included in this list are "Guest", "SharedDocs", and "Joe". Guest and SharedDocs both work, but "Joe" (the one I want to work) won't let me in. 

I did this guest-account thing before I changed the user/pass to match, and it worked even then. Once I changed the user/pass, the guest one still worked, and the Joe one still did not. 

Is there anything else I could be missing here? They're obviously talking to each other, and working in most respects. I just can't get this "Joe" folder to work. 

Thanks again!


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Have you tried accessing the shared file this way=> click run type \\computername\sharedfolder or \\computername\c
How about mapping a Network Drive?

Can you pls. post an *ipconfig /all *info of the problematic computer and one that's not having an issue?


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## Xeneth (Mar 11, 2009)

Just Curious, can you ping your laptop from your desktop of vise-verse? Does your router have an ACL, NAT, or firewall?


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## Unit Twentyfive (Oct 7, 2008)

Hi all, 

Sorry for the delay in my reply; I had to go out of town for a couple of weeks for 'family stuff' and didn't get back to this until now. 

I was able to get one of the computers to share with the other (I could access the desktop from the laptop, but not vice-versa), but even so, that's all I really need it for, so I'm going to just count the current progress as better-than-it-was, and leave it at that (partly because it works enough for me, but mostly because my XP machine just wonked out on me today... but that's another story).

Thanks again for all the input, and sorry again for 'disappearing' for a while. Cheers!


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## 2xg (Aug 5, 2009)

Thanks for the update.


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