This post will hopefully help those of you who are having problems getting
your XP and Vista machines to share information across your networks; but
first let me remind you that some of the things you need to do in order to
accomplish this are a security risk, i.e., turning on guest accounts. This
allows others using the guest account feature access to your shared drives,
files, and folders. That said; you need to make sure guest accounts are
turned on for each computer on your network that you wish to share
information with. Vista has the guest account turned off by default, as did
XP. You must also make sure that any firewall software you are using will
allow the networked computers to access each other. The final thing you need
to do is to add the guest account to the share (drive, file, or folder),
again by default Vista doesn't have the share for guest accounts set up. For
the purpose of this discussion I will give you the steps necessary to give
the guest account shared access on a drive on a Vista machine.
Step 1. Open an Explorer window so you can see the drive you are sharing.
Step 2. Right click the drive and select Properties.
Step 3. Choose the Security tab.
Step 4. Under the Groups or user names there will be an Edit... radio button
past the text "To change permissions, click Edit." and you will click on
this button.
Step 5. That should have opened a window that lists the Group or user names
that have access control and permissions on your Vista machine, you need to
click the Add... radio button.
Step 6. In this window click on the Object Types... radio button and
unselect all but the Groups check box and then click OK.
Step 7. You will be returned to the previous window where you will need to
click on the Advanced... radio button at the bottom left of the window.
Step 8. Click the Find Now radio button approximately 1/3 down on the right
side of the window.
Step 9. Find and highlight the Guests under the Search results: frame and
then click the OK button.
Step 10. Click OK on the next window and it should build the share for guest
on the shared drive.
Step 11. By now you should be back to the Permissions for the shared drive
window; with the Guest account highlighted in the upper pane (Groups or user
names go to the bottom half of this window in the lower pane (Permissions
for Authenticated Users) and put a check mark in each permission you want to
give guest rights to use, and then click OK.
Step 12. Returns you to the first window and the Security tab click OK to
close this.
You should now be able to access the information with your XP machine and
visa versa. Hope this is of help to some of you with the problem of not
being able to share resources across the Vista and XP network.

Thank you for the detail information. It is better to create an identical user in all computers in the workgroup network instead of enabling guest account.

Bob Lin, MS-MVP, MCSE & CNE
Networking, Internet, Routing, VPN Troubleshooting on http://www.ChicagoTech.net
How to Setup Windows, Network, VPN & Remote Access on http://www.HowToNetworking.com
"Westley" wrote in message ...
This post will hopefully help those of you who are having problems getting
your XP and Vista machines to share information across your networks; but
first let me remind you that some of the things you need to do in order to
accomplish this are a security risk, i.e., turning on guest accounts. This
allows others using the guest account feature access to your shared drives,
files, and folders. That said; you need to make sure guest accounts are
turned on for each computer on your network that you wish to share
information with. Vista has the guest account turned off by default, as did
XP. You must also make sure that any firewall software you are using will
allow the networked computers to access each other. The final thing you need
to do is to add the guest account to the share (drive, file, or folder),
again by default Vista doesn't have the share for guest accounts set up. For
the purpose of this discussion I will give you the steps necessary to give
the guest account shared access on a drive on a Vista machine.
Step 1. Open an Explorer window so you can see the drive you are sharing.
Step 2. Right click the drive and select Properties.
Step 3. Choose the Security tab.
Step 4. Under the Groups or user names there will be an Edit... radio button
past the text "To change permissions, click Edit." and you will click on
this button.
Step 5. That should have opened a window that lists the Group or user names
that have access control and permissions on your Vista machine, you need to
click the Add... radio button.
Step 6. In this window click on the Object Types... radio button and
unselect all but the Groups check box and then click OK.
Step 7. You will be returned to the previous window where you will need to
click on the Advanced... radio button at the bottom left of the window.
Step 8. Click the Find Now radio button approximately 1/3 down on the right
side of the window.
Step 9. Find and highlight the Guests under the Search results: frame and
then click the OK button.
Step 10. Click OK on the next window and it should build the share for guest
on the shared drive.
Step 11. By now you should be back to the Permissions for the shared drive
window; with the Guest account highlighted in the upper pane (Groups or user
names go to the bottom half of this window in the lower pane (Permissions
for Authenticated Users) and put a check mark in each permission you want to
give guest rights to use, and then click OK.
Step 12. Returns you to the first window and the Security tab click OK to
close this.
You should now be able to access the information with your XP machine and
visa versa. Hope this is of help to some of you with the problem of not
being able to share resources across the Vista and XP network.