Setting up a home network

Heres the story, I just bought a Dell Laptop (Thanks Marty! Sorry Ryan!) and I am trying to transfer most of the files into this new computer as well as share a printer.

I did the network setup wizard on both computers, clicked on the files I want to share on my old computer and my old computer still refuses to show up on the laptop. My friend told me to ping the IP of the old computer and it worked, packets were transferred.

Laptop is running WinXP
Desktop is running WinME

Anyone have a clue on how to get this network up and running?

I guess disabling Norton Antivirus and Internet Security helpped. Is there a way I can have these turned on and still run a network?

You really have the choice of protecting the computers from each other (Internet Security on) or ahre resources to trusted systems (Internet Security off). If you read the docs you may find that you can set it up so your other laptop is allowed to access files only.

Windows is not really designed to be open and secure at the same time. It uses the same network ports for too many things, making it hard to say that system A can access only certain aspects of system B. There are ways to do it, but it requires a fairly good amount of knowledge.

You should be able to share files with Norton Antivirus turned on.

Windows is not really too insecure if administered correctly, but learning to administer it is a ..... hassle.

Daniel (I don't do Windows. I do Unix)

yep just tell norton secuty to trust the other pc

Are these on a router that provides ip addresses through dhcp?

Anyway, in either case:
check the ip of each, start/run/command/ipconfig
the ip schemes should match, 192.168.1.x is a common one, ip should be same on each except for the last #
check the workgroup name, ME right click my computer and find the workgroup name, XP right click ny computer, identification, check workgroup name

turn off software firewalls for now, xp also may have another built-in one and I have often seen this one mess up windows networking

try this: start/run/ "\\<the ip of the ME computer"
example start/run \\192.168.1.104
this will work in place of knowing the computer name and can pull up a pc more quickly that waiting for the network names to propagate

good luck

The Win ME machine will need to have NetBEUI protocol installed, the XP machine has this on without showing it. Network Neighborhood uses NetBEUI to display PC's in a workgroup of a peer network (no server).

If I rember correctly the other systems folders or harddrive will not show up if you do not have the said folder or drive set for shareing.