Windows Vista Laptop cannot access Windows XP Computers on the network

**NaFula** · 29-01-2008

I’m running three computers that are 1 windows Vista running on Sony VAIO and 2 Windows XP desktops on my Home Network. All are enabled for File sharing. But the problem am facing is though both Windows XP systems are able to see and access Vista files and folders, Vista is unable to see any of these XP desktops.

When I try accessing XP from Vista in network, I receive and error message saying “Windows cannot access. Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network problems, click diagnose.” When I click on the diagnose, it gives me another error as follows: “Cannot communicate with DD69M251 (192.168.1.2)/”

Any help will be appreciated.

**agarwalm11** · 30-01-2008

Are you running any third party firewalls on any of your computers or laptop? Specially a product of Symantec? If yes, you will need to uninstall it completely from all systems because the errors and situations you provided above indicates the misconfigured firewall issue. Other than this, you should check out this article for the step by step network configuration.

**Kristaps** · 30-01-2008

Run the XPs File and Printer sharing wizard, so that they know to share with other machines. namely vista.

**NaFula** · 30-01-2008

Thank you very much for your replies and suggestions. First, I ran the XP File and Printer sharing wizard and both XP computers show the printer as being shared. When I ran that wizard on Vista, it doesn’t show any printer? Is there something wrong?

As per the firewalls are concerned, I don’t have any third party firewall or any Norton products installed on my computer. The one I have is McAfee antivirus, that’s it.

What now?