I have a desktop with Vista and a 1TB WD HD attached via usb cable. My
laptop has XP Home. I use MS One Care for the networking and would like to
add the usb drive to the network to make the backups automatic. It is
already working fine on the desktop. I have been unable to get the laptop to
recognize the USB drive. I have tried the help screens in One Care to no
avail. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

You need to allow sharing on the USB drive, which is not as straight forward
a proposition on Vista as it is in XP, but what is?
In addition to simply allowing sharing you have to allow ownership rights.
Why? Because the brain trust that designed the speedy, efficient and easy to
use WOW! that is Vista says so.
The choices that will be displayed are non-descriptive and non-intuitive and
if you are not basically familiar with network arcana then rotsa ruck,
fella.
Also, even if you get all the settings right, the next time you power down
the computer or USB drive all those settings are gone and have to be reset.
I can't wait to pay for Vista SP3, oops, I mean Windows 7.

Do you need a hug?

I have been unable to get the laptop to recognize the USB drive.

This statement is confusing to me: Do you mean that you plugged the USB
drive into the laptop? Or do you mean that you cannot access the device
over the network?

If you are unable to connect to the drive over the network, try following
the sharing suggestions linked below:

http://www.vista4beginners.com/share-files-and-folders



"PaulH7436" wrote in message
...
I have a desktop with Vista and a 1TB WD HD attached via usb cable. My
laptop has XP Home. I use MS One Care for the networking and would like
to
add the usb drive to the network to make the backups automatic. It is
already working fine on the desktop. I have been unable to get the laptop
to
recognize the USB drive. I have tried the help screens in One Care to no
avail. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!