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win 7 laptop can't connect to xp desktop via wifi

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nite_monkey:
I've got a kind of weird problem here. My mom has a toshiba laptop running windows 7 home premium x86. It is connected to the internet via wifi, and works perfectly. The laptop can see and connect to my desktop computer which is running win7 pro x64, but it cannot connect to another computer on the network running windows xp pro x86 by typing it's name. The laptop can however connect to the xp computer if it types in the ip address of the xp computer. I figured the problem might have been a problem with the onboard wifi card, so we plugged in an external wifi card with the same results. Here is where it gets interesting. I turned off the wifi card on the laptop, and plugged an ethernet cable into the laptop, and it can now connect to the xp computer by typing in it's name instead of the ip address. So my question here is what would be causing the laptop to be doing this?

40hz:
Is the workgroup name on the XP machine the same as it is on the two Win7 machines?

Oops. Cancel that. Was thinking of something else.  :-[

nite_monkey:
Is the workgroup name on the XP machine the same as it is on the two Win7 machines?
-40hz (October 28, 2010, 05:24 PM)
--- End quote ---
yes

40hz:
Are you broadcasting the SSID on your WAP?

And what are you using for your firewall?

Carol Haynes:
Does XP have proper sharing or simple sharing enabled? Look in Control Panel / Folder Options / View  it is the last item - untick it.

You then need to set up the sharing of folders manually on XP. I find this far less flaky than simple sharing which can be a bit hit and miss (even worse sharing with Vista). A vaild user on XP is "Everyone" so if it is a home network and you aren't sharing confidential info (!!) set the sharing permission for Everyone to Full control and it should pop up for all network users without any user profile restrictions.

Are you sure the workgroup names are the same? The default on all versions of Windows is "Workgroup" except for XP when, for some reason, MS changed it to "MSHOME".

Also try turning off your firewall on the laptop and other computers briefly and see if it works - if it does there is your problem.

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