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I have a Vista-based media center, and two XP-based desktop computers, all on a simple home WLAN network (DSL/WLAN router). The Vista computer can see all other computers and transfer/modify files shared on XP, but my XP computers see only each other and not the Vista computer -- why?
I can ping
the Vista computer from the XP computers, using it's IP or even it's machine name ("cinema-pc"), but I can't browse to the vista computer using Windows Explorer (neither by IP nor by name): "Windows cannot find '\cinema-pc'. Check the spelling and try again..."
All three computers are using only the regular built-in Windows firewall software with default settings, and I believe the router sets no restrictions on the internal network.
The Vista computer has shares like \\cinema-pc\audio
but even if there were no shares on Vista, I would still expect to be able to see the computer itself.
I've tried every trick I know but can't come up with a reason for this behaviour. How do I fix my network so that I can access my Vista computer from my XP computers?
Update after several days fiddling and testing -- I cannot solve the network problems and every single tip given was tested successfully, yet without solving the matter. As much as I hate reinstalling from scratch, I begin to suspect that I need to reinstall my Vista computer, to see if that helps. Perhaps I'll even downgrade to (ugh!) XP Media Center so I'll at least have the same OS all around. – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2009-10-14T06:57:20.013