First of all, my LAN is fully functional for network access (all file sharing configuration settings are properly configured) and I use the same username/password on all computers so accessing administrative shares is a breeze. My problem is this: When i'm using computer A, I can access administrative shares (or any other share for that matter) on computer B just fine, with read and write access to the filesystem on computer B from computer A. However, when I jump over to computer B, it doesn't allow me to access computer A, as if it's not connected to the network. Again however, If I restart both computers and begin with computer B, I can access computer A just fine, but then moving over to computer A, I cannot access computer B (the problem reversed) Is there a limitation of simultaneous 2-way connections through the LAN on Windows or something? Maybe it's a problem specific to networking XP with 7? I don't know but it's very frustratingto me. It's even gone as far as letting me read and browse the file system on computer A from computer B, but as soon as I try to write to it, it times out like the computer has dissappeared. I should have no problem accessing any computer on my network from any other computer on my network, but everytime I make a connection from one computer to another, it prevents me from making that same connection back the other way. What would cause this to happen? I would greatly appreciate the person that could help me resolve this issue.

Posting the result of ipconfig /all on both computers here amy help.Bob Lin, MS-MVP Networking, Internet, Routing, VPN Troubleshooting on http://www.ChicagoTech.net How to Setup Windows, Network, VPN & Remote Access on http://www.howtonetworking.com

Thank you for your reply. I will check those links thoroughly as they appear to possibly contain the solution to my problem. If I find it I'll be sure to recap here.

Thank you for your reply chicagotech. I've read through those links and tried various solutions but none of them resolved the specific problem I detailed in the original post. However, after a windows update on the XP machine the problem does seem to be gone. Unfortunately there were quite a few updates needed so I have no idea which one it would have been that may have solved the issue. Nonetheless I can now network Win7 with XPPro and both computers can make multiple 2-way simultaneous connections to each other with read/write access with no problem. If the issue comes back i'll be sure to return here with more details. However, I did find an answer in the above links that resolved a similar problem I was having, which was that another XP machine on the network could browse all of my other computers but other computers could not browse the XP machine at all. After running Network Setup Wizard and disabling Computer Browser service on the XP machines, I now seem to have convenient full access from anywhere to anywhere in the network. Sometimes though, when browsing backwards (back up the shared directory tree) on one particular XP machine to the other XP machine, there is about a 30 second timeout before refreshing the folder each time... however it DOES stay connected and refresh the folder so I consider it to be acceptable. Thanks.