Vista - XP Networking

Can anyone please shed some light on this? I bought a Dell laptop about 6 months ago and foolishly decided to have Vista on it. I have two networks - one at home, one in my office, both using a Netgear router - with machines running XP on them.

Until recently all machines could happily talk to each other on both networks. Now the Vista machine has suddenly decided to stop talking to the XP machines on both. I can�t pin this down to any particular software change or update.

There are no problems with network connections or workgroup names, each machine can ping all the others. The XP machines show on the network map on the Vista machine but when I try to map an XP machine drive on the Vista machine I get a "Windows cannot access \\..." message and error code 0x80070035. Clicking 'Diagnose' leads to a message saying that the name of the XP machine is not recognised, even though it�s showing on the network map on the Vista machine.

Turning the firewalls off on all machines makes no difference.

Googling shows that shed loads of people are asking about this problem but no-one is providing solutions.

Any clues?

This may help you..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958285/en-us

Thnx but I'm not using a "cooperation network over a VPN connection". I just plug the PC into the router!

If you run ipconfig /all on the problem PC what is the node type (Hybrid or peer to peer).

If it is set to peer to peer use the following reg edit to change it to hybrid: -
http://networking.nitecruzr.net/2005/05/address-reso...

Hmmm. ipconfig /all doesn't show me the node type.

You do not get Host Name, Primary DNS Suffix, Mode Type at the top of the ipconfig?

If not it might be worth resetting the IP stack. Open a command prompt with elevated priveledges (Right click and choose run as admin) and type: -
netsh winsock reset

Am getting the node type now and it is indeed set to peer-to-peer. Tried changing the registry key in line with the link you provided but it still reads peer-to-peer. I guess the key must be different for Vista - that article seems to be geared around XP.

What a pile of poo. How is your average home user who just wants to buy something, plug it in and have it working supposed to deal with this carp? What's more I object to repeatedly being told to "consult my network administrator"; I am my network administrator and I don't have a clue!![/rant]

turn off passworded sharing on vista and ensure the permissions on the xp shares are correct.

Thnx. Done all that stuff. It worked fine until the beginning of May!

Have you installed "Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder" on the XPs?

I know this is needed for some part of networking with Vistas, but if you been OK for 6 months then you have probably already done it or it is not necessary for everything.

Do all PCs and Router have a common Workgroup/Domain name?

Enabled "Client for MS Networks" & "File & Printer Sharing for MS Networks" on active Network Connection?