Hey group! A REAL NOVICE HERE. As we say in Afrikaans, "vreemdeling in
gebied, wees asb geduldig" which means "stranger in these parts,
please be patient". My main production machine is Windows 2000 Pro
SP4, my wife's desktop is XP Home, and we have two Vista Business 32
laptops that work via the WLAN very well when connecting to the
internet etc. But, I want a REAL EASY WAY to connect ALL my computers
to each other. There has to be some procedure somewhere and looking
for it via Microsoft's search facility is like looking for a white
peson in Africa - or the proverbial needle in a haystack. I have tried
to make sense of the do this, do that, from the knowledgebases and
TechNet, but it doesn't work. I can see my desktop machine from my
laptop, but I cannot connect to it, not even with the administrator's
login. I cannot see the XP Home machine from either my desktop or my
laptop, and only occasionally can I see the other laptop from my
laptop. Unfortunately I have to go to each and every machine, ensure
the WORKGROUP is the same (which it is) and then add a SHARE to Drive
C of each machine (already done) but I still cannot log in to these
other machines.

So, is there a networking genius out there who has tried to connect
all these different operating systems together and succeeded? If so,
please send me the recipe. It's driving me silver haired, and I don't
have that many years left on this planet to figure it out myself. In
February 2009, I will be replacing the two desktop machines with two
new desktop machines running Vista Home Premium, or compatible -
possibly Linux (Ubuntu) with Vista in a box somewhere on the hard
disk, but I haven't decided about this yet.

First things first, can someone please help me get these computers to
see one another?!

Thanks.
Ian Samson