I asked a question about repairing my network in this newsgroup a few days
ago and got no response so I'm going to ask it a little differently and see
if anyone can help.

Up until about two weeks ago I had a working network of three
computers running WinXP and two running 32-bit Vista. I could get on any of
the XP computers and access files in shared folders on the Vista machines.
I could go to any of the computers and click on "Network" and see all five
computers. I didn't use the network every day but it was there when I
wanted it. Yesterday, I was on one of the XP machines and wanted to open an
Excel file that was in a folder on a Vista machine and I couldn't access the
network. This is a file that I'd opened on that machine many times in the
past. I looked on the Vista machine and the file was there but I couldn't
see any other computers on the network. Nothing was working like it had
been the last time I looked. I hadn't changed a thing--no new software or
hardware! Nothing!

After changing some firewall settings and adding some protocols on the XP
machines I can get them to see each other and access files among them. I
can get the two Vista machines to see each other and swap files between
them. However, I can't get any connection between the Vista
machines and the XP machines. They're in the same workgroup but it's like
they don't know the other part of the group exists.

All five computers can access the web through the router and DSL modem so I
don't think it's a hardware problem.

As I said, I made no hardware or software changes to any of the computers in
the workgroup between the time the network worked and the time it didn't.
No changes to firewall settings, no changes to workgroup name. I'm running
the same firewall and same anti-virus as before.

As far as I know the only things that's happened to the computers are that
the anti-virus program updated it's signatures and the computers downloaded
and installed the Microsoft updates that came out. Is it possible that
Windows update installed something that changed enough settings to bung up
the network? I've thought about using system restore to go back before any
updates to see if that returns everything back to where it was. However,
I'm reluctant to do that since I haven't had the greatest experiences with
system restore in the past. Every time I've used it I've had something
break and I've ended up having to reinstall and reconfigure things.

Anyhow, does anyone have any suggestions? TIA

Gary