My client has 4 PCs - 2 with Vista Ultimate, 1 with Vista Business and 1 with Vista Home Premium. All 4 will connect to Internet and Network when plugged directly into the router. However, two of these PCs are to be located in the house so will connect to the router as follows: PC - Ethernet wall plug - Patch Panel - Switch - Router. At this point, the PC with Vista Ultimate has no problem connecting to the same network as it did when it was connected to the router directly. Indeed I tried both the Vista Ultimate PCs on the same Ethernet wall plug using the same cable and they both had no problem. The PC with Vista Home Premium though using the same wall plug and cable will not see the network at all. It uses the IP address 169.254.118.107 and despite tweaking the registry as per http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/928233 it has no effect at all. Can anyone suggest a solution other than upgrading Home Premium to Ultimate at a cost of $159? I did speak to Microsoft and the fellow I spoke to did admit that he thought there was a problem in Home Premium that was not in Ultimate regarding networking. I have tried re-installing the operating system at Dell's suggestion but that is all they come up with claiming that they are not trained to provide networking support.

Have you checked the firewall settings on the Home Premium machine ( doubt that this is a Home versus Ultimate issue...)? See my post"Windows Vista <--> XP home networking succesfully resolved!" at http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1683125&SiteID=17 We had 3 computers on the home network: 2 XP Prof SP2 and 1 Vista Home Basic. After resolution of the internetworking issue, 1 XP machine was upgraded to Vista Ultimate, and then the Home Basic to Premium. There have been absolutely no further network access problems after the original reconfiguration of the firewall settings on all 3 machines. All the best. Sunthar

Yes, I have checked the Firewall settings. The fact that this particular computer won't connect through the switch but will connect through the router directly and the other PCs will connect through the switch (all the other three are now using Ultimate) makes me think that the problem is with Home Premium. Thanks for your feedback but nearly all your links seem to relate to XP-Vista and not Vista-Vista.CheersChris