Vista/XP sharing

Lindsay Lohan

So - I just bought a laptop. It's much more powerful than my old PC (except for the video card ) but I really need to get my old stuff off my PC and onto the new laptop. However, despite the fact that I am set up and sharing stuff between my old PC and the wife's laptop (both XP), I can't see the XP machines or shared folders on my new Vista laptap.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a way I could just FTP into my old machine or something to let me get files - like shortcuts - that aren't normally in shared directories?

Help!

quovadis13

Herby wrote: »

So - I just bought a laptop. It's much more powerful than my old PC (except for the video card ) but I really need to get my old stuff off my PC and onto the new laptop. However, despite the fact that I am set up and sharing stuff between my old PC and the wife's laptop (both XP), I can't see the XP machines or shared folders on my new Vista laptap.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a way I could just FTP into my old machine or something to let me get files - like shortcuts - that aren't normally in shared directories?

Help!

I was trying to do this myself just recently and it gave me a few headaches. Are you trying to set up the network wirelessly??? Make sure you have the local network named the same. Vista insists on naming the network Workgroup, so I had to restart my XP computers several times before I was even able to see them on my Vista comp. Even when I was able to do that, the transfer rate was ridiculously slow.

I ended up just hooking the two computers up to my router and transfering the files like that. It worked well and transfered pretty quickly.

enderwiggin13

One thing you need to make sure to do in Vista is to make the network "Private" instead of "Public". I know that sounds counterintuitive, but Private to Vista means you're at home and not out in public so it will share things.

Open Explorer > Right Click 'Network' > Properties > Customize > tick Private > Next > Close

I forget if a reboot is required. This one drove me nutty trying to share with my 360.

Pratley

My vista machine can see xp machines but not vice versa, so I just make an upload folder with full permissions if I need to transfer.

It's probably the retarded public vs private thing ender mentioned, I'll have to try it.

Rohan

To be able to get Vista and XP to talk to each other, you need to download a file from Windows Update for XP. But I couldn't be arsed to find it.

DHS Odium

You don't need to download a separate file, at least I didn't.

Go to the Network and Sharing Center. Turn off password protected sharing, turn file sharing on, and turn on public folder sharing if you're going to dump stuff from XP to Vista, and make sure it's set to the second option where anyone on your network can open, change, and make files. Make sure network discovery is on, and you might as well turn on media sharing as well.

Lindsay Lohan

Tried everything (except the Windows up route - guess that's next) still can't see the XP machine.

funkydue

Vista uses a new protocol named Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) to display a network “map” of all computers in a network, but the protocol is only in Vista, so XP computers do not show up in this map.

Microsoft has generously released the software for XP, and it must be installed on an XP machine for it to show up in the Vista map. Click here to download the software for Windows XP SP2.

Lindsay Lohan

Darn it - installed LLTD on the XP machine and still can't share files. I can see my home PC now though - if I go to Network and Sharing and choose View Full Map it now shows up there. I just can't seem to actually access any files from it.

fogeyman

Weird. For me it just worked. I hooked up an XP laptop and a Vista desktop to a router, made sure they could talk to each other via cmd (ping 192.168.etc), made sure the workgroup and whatnot all matched up, and the computers simply talked.

I didn't do anything special except install a Vista patch that fixes moving/copying large files.

Lindsay Lohan

Well - issue solved. I'm not sure what did it, but I went away, put together a shelf, came back and Bessie was listed on my Vista machine. Thanks for the help all!