I have Vista Ultimate connected directly with XP because I want to keep my
network running at a gigabit rather than plugging into my switch which is 100
Base T. I can get everything working between the two computers, but once I
shut down the XP computer Vista automatically reverts the settings for direct
connection with my XP machine and every time I turn the XP maching back on I
must turn on network discovery again which is becoming a huge headache.

Is there a way to have Vista remember these changes and stop dumping my
setting everytime the XP computer is shut-off?

Darren,

I'm sorry you're experiencing trouble. The problem may be with DHCP. Both
Vista and XP will default to using DHCP on a NIC for IP address, and it will
take some time before the addresses revert to the auto-IP addresses, which is
necessary (on both machines) for the two to talk. Vista may be quicker to
switch to the auto-IP address after that when the link is dropped on the NIC
(XP box rebooting), but the XP box may still be taking some time to fall back
to the auto-IP address.

To test this, hardcode the IP addy on the machines, and see if that
eliminatesthe problem. Configure one machine with 192.168.1.10 and the other
with 192.168.1.11 (both with a 255.255.255.0 network mask). To make it even
faster, put the entry in each machine's hosts and lmhosts file (static
entries to map names to IP addresses).

Please post back with findings.


"Darren" wrote:

I have Vista Ultimate connected directly with XP because I want to keep my
network running at a gigabit rather than plugging into my switch which is 100
Base T. I can get everything working between the two computers, but once I
shut down the XP computer Vista automatically reverts the settings for direct
connection with my XP machine and every time I turn the XP maching back on I
must turn on network discovery again which is becoming a huge headache.

Is there a way to have Vista remember these changes and stop dumping my
setting everytime the XP computer is shut-off?