Wireless sharing between XP Home Edition & Windows 2000 Prof Editi

I'll keep this question simple...

My home [desktop Dell CPU] has the XP Home Edition OS. My work laptop
currently uses the Windows 2000 Professional OS. I'm having trouble
sucessfully sharing my home printer(hard-wired to home CPU) with my laptop.
Several months ago, I disabled the firewall protection on my home CPU and
still received an error message (along the lines of "the shared computer
cannont be found) - although I did forget to disable firewall settings when I
attempted the [failed] sharing function just last week.

1st question I have is - does XP Home Edition OS support wireless
networking/sharing [either in general or when crossed with a different OS
like Windows 2000 Professional] - or do I need to have the XP Professional OS
to successfully share [a printer]?

If yes - is this strictly a firewall disablement issue or am I missing
something else?

Thanks in advance!
--
MLA

=?Utf-8?B?bWFsYXJjaA==?=

malarch wrote:

> I'll keep this question simple...
>
> My home [desktop Dell CPU] has the XP Home Edition OS. My work laptop
> currently uses the Windows 2000 Professional OS. I'm having trouble
> sucessfully sharing my home printer(hard-wired to home CPU) with my
> laptop. Several months ago, I disabled the firewall protection on my
> home CPU and still received an error message (along the lines of "the
> shared computer cannont be found) - although I did forget to disable
> firewall settings when I attempted the [failed] sharing function just
> last week.
>
> 1st question I have is - does XP Home Edition OS support wireless
> networking/sharing [either in general or when crossed with a different
> OS like Windows 2000 Professional] - or do I need to have the XP
> Professional OS to successfully share [a printer]?
>
> If yes - is this strictly a firewall disablement issue or am I missing
> something else?

File-sharing between Windows machines has nothing to do with whether one
or more of those machines is connecting to the lan via a wireless
router or ethernet.

Since XP Home only authenticates as Guest, create identical user
accounts and passwords on both machines. If the XP Home machine
currently doesn't use a password, assign one from the User Accounts
applet in Control Panel. You can always set the machine to log in
automatically for your convenience.

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

Do not disable firewalls! Instead, configure them to allow the lan
traffic as trusted. If you are using the XPSP Windows Firewall, make
sure you aren't running a third-party firewall or have an antivirus
with "Internet Worm Protection" (like Norton 2005/06) which acts as a
firewall. You only want one firewall running. If you have third-party
firewall software, configure it to allow the Local Area Network traffic
as trusted. I usually do this with my firewalls with an IP range. Ex.
would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your
correct subnet.

If that doesn't work for you, here is an excellent network
troubleshooter by MVP Hans-Georg Michna. Take the time to go through it
and it will usually pinpoint the problem area(s) -
http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User