First off - In your next post, can you PLEASE not make your paragraphs
look like LEGALESE IN A CONTRACT???? It would make your posts A LOT
easier to read.

As it is now, I'm having to dissect the paragraph below & add additional
characters when & where needed in my reply.

With that, here it goes.....

dbrannon79 wrote:
I'm new here. I'm sure that this type of question has been asked many
times, but here goes... I've got three computers connected to a dlink
router. two of them are windows xp (sp3) desktop machines that are
connected by ethernet, and the other is a windows vista laptop which is
connected by wireless.

Can you connect BOTH desktop machines to your router? If so, that would
bethe simplest way to go I would think.

the whole purpose of this network is so that one
desktop has my printer and has been dedicated to my magicjack phone.

On my network, all my desktop PC will be doing is running all the
software for my Ham Radio station & serving as additional Hard Drive
space (My laptop doesn't see any of the hardware of the desktop beyond
that). It'll also be where the printer is plugged into.

I have gone through all kinds of settings over and over again. all three are
set to "MSHOME" workgroup, the firewalls have been disabled.

You need to ENABLE them & give each firewall permission to allow each
computer to talk to one another. Disabling your firewalls leaves you
open to attacks from the Internet. You should **NEVER** be on the
Internet without a firewall of some sort enabled. That's just like
putting up a virtual neon sign saying "ATTACK ME!! I AM ALL YOURS!! I
AM AT YOUR MERCY!!".

Sounds silly I know, ut in this day & age (And with this sick world), IT
IS ALSO TRUE.

I also have tried manually setting the ip address for each instead of letting the
router automatically doing that.

Umm.....WHY????? Is there some reason for this?

I have a LinkSys router & I let it set the IP address for both of my
computers automatically.

on the laptop I can open "network and
sharing center" and click on "view full map" I see the laptop and the
older pc, but when click "view computers and devices" I only see the
laptop and the router! on the newer pc, I can open "my network places"
and click on "view workgroup computers" it waits for a moment and then
displays a message "MSHOME is not accessible.... contact network
administrator... Network path not found". as for the older pc, I
click "view workgroup computers" and I see all three pc's and I can also
click on each pc and view files and other shared folders from them.

What am I doing wrong? all three connect to the router and to the
internet which is connected at the router. I think I'm going to pull my
hair out before this is all over with!

See everything I have posted above & then do what Jack suggested as you
screwed up somewhere. Question is WHERE??

I wish I could be of better help, but I'm still something of a newbie
when it comes to this stuff too, but I'm learning (And yes, I've made
mistakes too. We all have or we wouldn't be here. *LOL!*)

Best of luck in getting things fixed....

Cheers

Pat Cook
Denver, CO