I have 2 desktops, one XP Pro, one XP Home, both SP2, connected with CAT5 cable to a router, then to a cable modem. I was sharing drives on both machines with the other. Then it just stopped working. It's not that it works for a while and then quits, as I have seen in numerous other posts. It never works at all. Both computers can access the Internet. The XP Pro machine can ping the XP Home machine, but not vice versa. The XP Pro machine can no longer print to the local printers on the XP Home machine. The printers on the XP Home machine do not show up when I try to add a network printer from the XP Pro machine. When I try to map a network drive from either mahcine, the other machine doesn't show up under MSHOME. If I pick the remote drive from the pull-down menu, the computer will lock up for a minute or so, then Windows Explorer will close suddenly, and the task bar will not come up from autohide for about a minute. Sometimes it reverses the order of the buttons on the task bar. When I try to access the remote drive, which still shows up in Windows Explorer, I get: An error occurred while reconnecting F: to \\Bocko\F Microsoft Windows Network: The network path was not found. This connection has not been restored. [OK] This is the same message I used to get if I tried to access the remote drive when the other computer is turned off. It does these exact same things on BOTH machines. I don't know what the problem is, but I can tell you what it isn't. The drives are shared, network drives are mapped, permissions are set, the workgroup is correct, etc., etc., etc. NONE of the settings were changed on either computer since file sharing was last working, and it had been working for well over a year. I have tweaked and fiddled and rebooted both machines dozens of times to no avail. I recently uninstalled Adaware from the XP Pro machine, and I read a post that said that this can mess up Win Sock. They had a link to Winsockxpfix.exe which I ran on both machines with no effect. I reinstalled Adaware, but that didn't fix it, either. I've spent 8-10 hours trying to fix this. I'm out of ideas, and I'm out of search terms. I'm just about ready to reformat and reinstall Windows on one or both machines, but it will take several days to reinstall all the software and restore them back to full functionality, and I can't afford to have them down that long. Running back and forth with a thumb drive is getting pretty old. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance, Ollie

OldOllie, Have you recently installed an antivirus suite? Most suites now contain some form of a firewall which could be blocking filesharing. If not have you looked at your windows firewall settings? Make sure you are allowing filesharing. Another thought, get the ip address of both machines by typing "ipconfig" and hitting enter in a cmd window. Once you have the ip addresses of the two machines try to map the drives using the IPs instead of the name. So if the machines Bocko has an IP of 192.168.1.100 then on the other machine try to map the F drive by using \\192.168.1.100\F.Let me know if you found this helpful?Viza