Home networking Vista and XP

I've asked in various other forums and still no luck:

I have a Dell 9100 w/ 3.0 GHz with XP Home OS in my den, which is hooked up to a Dell printer via USB...all these are on a Motorola cable modem and a D-Link router. My gaming computer is in my bedroom running Vista Home Premium. I can't for the sake of my life get these to be networked to share documents and print from the Dell printer. Any help is appreciated.

I feel your pain. I had the same problem with the printer. I tried installing it on my Vista PC and share it with Xp and my XP machine to share with Vista. Well I ended up getting the vista upgrade DVD for my Xp machine. Problem solved. Also you could depending on your printer make it a network printer(also solved the XP vs Vista sharing issue). I looked through alot of guides on how to share a printer with XP and Vista having the printer installed on one of the PCs. Each time it came to the drivers not wanting to install on the host computer. I would select to share the diver and it would not let me pick the driver. I would select the file and it always would say its not the right type of file.

My advice is if you can network it, try that. It is not a perfect fix, but will work. If the 9100 has 2GB of ram or more fix that up with Vista. My wife was not happy with that idea as she still had xp and didnt want to mess anything up. She has had no complaints with vista.(Thank goodness) I got an upgrade version of home basic for 29 bucks on ebay. A full version of home premium is normally 80 bucks or less most of the time. Good luck.

This should be easy:

The Cable modem and computers are all connected to the right ports on the router?
Both machines can see the internet right?
Make sure that the two computers are set to the same workgroup.
Make sure that file and printer sharing is turned on on the XP Home Machine.
You may also may need to make sure that things like network discovery and file and printer sharing are turned on on your client Vista machine.

*Edit*

As mentioned above, vista likes user accounts with passwords. Make sure that the XP machine has a useraccount with a password set on it and that it is required for sharing.

Try using a usb printer server.

Here are a few to choose from:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] ?CatId=206


**edit**

Now that I'm thinking of it. I might get one of these. My wife and I aren't having the issue you are (both pc's on XP) but it would be nice to print from any pc in the house without keeping my main pc on all of the time. I bet I could find one of these usb print servers in an elcheapo airlink brand at Frys this weekend.

Also they say to make sure all the workgroups are the same although this did nothing for me...

I have my gaming rig with vista 64 ultimate, another vista home premium that's wireless and an XP laptop thats wireless. The printer is on the vista home premium and all are on the same workgroup with everything in network and sharing turned to 'yes.' I havent had any luck seeing any computer/printer on any machine. Highly frustrating.

Just a thought - you may need your printer drivers also installed on the remote machine. I don't have Vista but had that problem on my XP machines.

Also - did you transfer the network settings to the remote computer with the USB drive?

You can transfer the settings manually or with a USB drive from computer to computer. That's what I was asking. Didn't mean to insult you in any way and sorry if I did.

When you're in network setup, there's a final step to transfer your settings to the other network computers. That step includes using a USB drive that you copy the settings to and then just plug them into the other networked computers.

For me, that seems to be the best way so I don't forget network, workgroup, and computer names.

I thought you guys will help me out too.

To configure a folder and all the files in it to be shared folder(s) on a network, follow these steps:
1. Right-click the folder, and then click Sharing and Security
2. Click to select the Share this folder on the network check box, and then click OK.
Local NTFS Permissions:
-- Owner: Full Control
-- Administrators: Full Control
-- System: Full Control
-- Everyone: Change
Network Share Permissions:
-- Everyone: Full Control

I have created a simple and easy to follow example of how to How To Network Vista And A XP Computers Together Quickly on http://needorwanthelp.com/ I do not want to copy my page info and just paste it here, so it is not pinging as duplicate content and reflecting on this blog.