Today I spent several hours trying to get filesharing between XP and 7 to work, and I'm about ready to drive out to Redmond and kick someone in the nuts. I have no idea why this is so difficult, I really don't. There's no call for it. I'd really appreciate it if someone could help out or if you have a link to a great resource on the topic. Here's what I encountered:

First, the environment: about 10 computers, half are on XP and half are on 7 (none on Vista, thank goodness). Many/most of the computers used to be on a domain, but they've abandoned that and slowly replaced computers without putting them on a domain. None of the 7 computers, I believe, were ever on a domain.

The general problem I'm having is that the Windows 7 computers can see each other, and the XP computers can see each other, but none of the 7 can see any of the XP. What the hell?

Here's what I've done so far on the 7 computers:
- destroyed anything to do with Homegroups
- In advanced sharing settings, I have everything set up the way it should be according to everything I've read: discovery on, file/printer sharing on, public folders off, 40/56-bit encryption accepted, password protected sharing off, user accounts and passwords selected

I was mostly given access to one XP machine, which was a bit of a mess. One thing I read said that nothing would work unless the Link Layer Topology Responder protocol was installed. It wasn't, and because SP3 was installed the only hotfix I found said it wouldn't install because it only worked with SP2. FU MS! I eventually found a workaround and installed it. But that only seemed to help slightly, and got me to the point where it was seeing other XP computers.

By the end of my visit to this place, I had gotten to the point where I could access any computer on the network from any other computer. HOWEVER! The only way this could be done on XP was to search for the computer. It wouldn't let me, for example, type \\computer12 in the run dialog, but if I went to search>computers>"computer12" it would find it and I could get in.

No matter what I did, I could not find a way to simply have Windows show all the computers on the network. Any suggestions? I'm really frustrated by this. I need to go back tomorrow and I don't know if I'm going to be able to fix the issue. Oh, and no, they will not be switching to Macs or installing Linux or anything like that

I was going to suggest building them a fileserver (with the OS of your choice), and migrating them away from a workflow where all the computers need to see each other.

So not one Windows Server in that environment and you are connecting multiple computers to one computer by chance? Perhaps you are running into the infamous 16 connection limit on that one computer? That would account for odd behavior like some computers working and others not (i.e. connection limit exceeded). Check the Event Log to be sure.

I'd love to, and they are ordering a server to replace one that crashed, but it won't be here for a week and they'd like to avoid using sneakernet for the time being.


I would be surprised. Like I said, they only have about 10 computers total, maybe 12, and none of the Windows 7 computers see any of the Windows XP computers (and vice versa) when viewing the network computers.

On the Windows XP machines, make sure "Simple File Sharing" is turned off.

Explorer -> Tools -> Options -> View -> (scroll to bottom of the list) Unckeck Simple File Sharing

Thanks, but I did this as well! Honestly, everything looks like its set up correctly on both OS's, but it just doesn't work...

Everyone is on the same workgroup and everything. The test shared folders I've created are shared with "everyone" and gives full control to the same in the security tab. But I'd imagine the problem isn't with the folders at all, since I believe the computer should still show up even if the folders aren't accessible to the user.

All computers are running 7/XP Professional, by the way, if that's important.

You can try using the lmhosts.sam file if your using static ip addresses.

This might also be an issue with the Master Browser election
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/how-to-xp-share-fix,review-215-7.html

Here's my notes on how to fix file sharing:

- (XP) Open a folder. Tools, Folder Options. "View" tab. Advanced Settings. Scroll to bottom. Deactivate "Use Simple File Sharing".
- (XP) FIREWALL.CPL: enable the exception for File and Printer Sharing.
- (XP) FIREWALL.CPL: Edit the exception for File and Printer sharing and CHANGE SCOPE for each of the ports to be "any computer".
- (Vista+) Network and Sharing Center: Enable Network Discovery and File Sharing
- (Vista) FIREWALL.CPL: ADD PORT for port 139 TCP.
- (Win7) WF.MSC: add an INBOUND RULE to allow port 139 TCP.

Ugh. Even though I often support it, sometimes I really hate Windows.

So today I went back and tried all the suggestions here that I hadn't tried yesterday, as well as some other stuff I looked up. NOTHING was working, and every single help thread I read on the subject was pretty much worthless or didn't have the problem solved.

But then, buried deep in a very long thread was a post that I happened to stumble on because I was at my breaking point and just reading everything I could. That post suggested something: make sure the computer name doesn't have a hyphen.

Now, sadly I can't be 100% certain if that's what fixed my problem or not, but all I know is that sometime before I changed the name of a particular problem PC I was working on, I was still having problems. Sometime after I removed the hyphen, it was working. If that is the case, it really pisses me off, because nowhere does it say that you can't use a hyphen in a computer name.

Now, I still was completely unable to get all the computers seeing all the other computers in the Network area. Unrelated to Windows version, some would show all the computers, some would only show like operating systems, others would only show a couple computers, other's wouldn't really show anything, and they all seemed to be set up right.

Clearly, MS has not done this correctly over the years, though I guess they're trying to get it right with Homegroup (which I still have several problems with).

Oh, and lastly I must reiterate how much I despise McAfee and Norton. Norton didn't give me any problems today, but McAfee completely blocked Windows file sharing for any computer it was installed on. Even when I added an exception for it in their POS interface, it still didn't work. So I uninstalled it from all computers and put MSE on...

Now you are realizing why some of us have chosen to exit the Windows support field. ;-)

Always remember that Microsoft is an enterprise focused company. Their number one cash cow is Windows and Office, mostly from licenses to businesses and enterprises. For your current situation, Microsoft expects and has written all of their networking code around the idea of a domain server being in place and managing all of this. Making file sharing work in a home, or an environment without a domain controller is a lower priority from a financial stand point. It's sadly not surprising there are issues like this.

I'm sorry, I realize my statement could be taken two different ways. I meant that I often support it here on this forum. For work I always support it

Hmm... my small matrix of Windows test machines all have hyphens in the names. I don't have them set up to share (and they're not on the domain), but one of the things I noticed when setting it up, is that I got complaints from Windows when the host-names were longer than a certain number of characters (15, I think, but I'm not sure). By any chance, are the computers named with common prefixes long enough that the hyphenated post-fix is ignored, and you're only seeing the first computer with the common prefix? Perhaps removing the hyphen made that computer's truncated name unique.

I don't know if the length thing was an issue, but I don't think the uniqueness thing was an issue. No part of any of the computer names were really like any other part.

Sorry in advance if you said this already, but can't find any reference to firewall except in Tony's post. Are all firewalls relevant ports open? As a quick test, you could disable firewalls and see what happens. I've put many Windows 7 and Vista in a fairly large LAN/WAN einvironments, and the only problems I had in seeing other pcs was caused by firewall misconfigured. Windows Vista and 7 adds some issues at first setup because when you choose among "home", "public", "office" network setups, what happens is that ports in teh firewall are configured so to allow or disallow specific traffic type. In theory, Office or Home should give you no problem.

Yes, I tried disabling Windows firewall on both computers and they still couldn't see each other in the list of network computers OR navigate to each other manually. It wasn't until I changed the the name on the Win7 computer that I was able to at least get to each other by manually going to \\computer.


My preference: install Dropbox on everyone's computer and you're freaking done.

Very weird. Or, I shoudl say, never happened to me. Could the pc involved ping each other?

Yup! The only time I wasn't able to ping another PC on the network was when McAfee was installed on the computer I was trying to ping (have I mentioned how much I hate McAfee?).

I can't think of anything but a bug, then. Yes, maybe the machine's name is an issue. The weird thing is that I dealt with machines having names with hyphens. Is it possible that the involved machines were not updated? Of course, I am just curious here, I realize you solved the problem and maybe don't want to waste more time on this.

If I recall correctly, I get whined at every time I set up a new Windows system and it prompts for a computer name, if I try to name it something with a hyphen.

At least that's my recollection. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I think it gives the same error for systems with too many characters in the computer name.

Long machine names just give a warning and do not block you from using them. The warning is something about DOS machines accessing the machine's shares if I remember correctly.