I have a new laptop running windows 7 home premium and an old desktop running windows xp home sp3. I have tried running windows network setup wizard to no avail. I made sure they were in the same workgroup and can view the xp machine from the win7 network but cannot ping either computer from the other one. When I click "view workgroup computers" in XP I get this message: "Workgroup is not accessible. you might not have permission to use this newtork resource. contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available." Both machines are running windows firewall and don't have any antivirus software. Please help.

For Windows 7 to connect to XP it must use the old XP style networking. For that it must have Netbios over TCP/IP enabled. On the Win 7 machine, go to the properties of the NIC and select Properties. Then select IPv4 and click its Properties. Click Advanced then click the WINS tab and click on Enable Netbios over TCP/IP. Bill

Sorry, I've tried so many things it's hard to keep track. Netbios is enabled on both machines.

If Netbios over TCP/IP is enabled and they are in the same workgroup, file sharing should work between XP and Win 7. (It does for me). Can you see the XP machine if you click on Network in Win 7? If you can see it, can you access its shared files? Does it ask for credentials. (I run Win 7 Pro but I know that this works in Home Premium).Bill

No, XP gives me the error message above when I try to view the workgroup.

Sorry, I read that wrong. For a while I could see the XP machine under the network tab, but couldn't click on it. Now it's gone away completely. So, no I can't access or ping either machine from the other.

Do you have any Firewalls installed other than the Windows Firewall on either computer? If so temporarily disble them and see if the problem goes away. Jerry