Vista/XP home network

1) Home-built standalone desktop PC running Vista Home Premium and
Zone Alarm, accessing the net through a wired router (Netgear DG834).
2) Asus Eee 901 running XP Pro and Zone Alarm.

I bought the 901 recently, stripped Xandros off and installed XP. It
runs fine. The network wizard has been run on each machine and each
machine's IP address put into the Trusted Zone in the other machine's
Zone Alarm settings. The appropriate folders have been shared with
"everyone" on each machine. The machines have different names and are
on the same workgroup.
On the Vista machine the laptop's name appears in Windows Explorer's
Network tree, if I click on it a warning appears on the laptop that
ZoneAlarm has blocked Internet access NetBios session from the desktop
IP address and quotes port number and flags. I have checked that the
address shown is that entered in the Trusted Zone.
On the XP machine the workgroup name appears in the Microsoft Windows
Network tree but the machine reports that it is not accessible. There
is no sign from the desktop machine that access has been attempted.

As you've probably gathered I have no experience with networks and no
idea what I'm doing here. I have googled around, read everything I can
find, set everything mentioned but it feels as if there are several
things I'm missing.

Anyone got time to help me?

Geoff

 

Following up my own post.
I did all the above network setup this morning and, as reported, it
didn't work. So, after three hours of checking and rechecking I banged
off the request for help above, made some tea and thought about it.
Then I checked it all again and, when it still didn't work, shut both
machines down because I had to go out. But they didn't shut down. Both
halted with dialogue boxes from Zone Alarm asking, essentially, did I
want to save the changes I had made? After standing there for a moment
with my mouth open I said yes and then I did really have to go out.
I've just come back in and booted the machines up. You've probably
guessed that the network is fine, both machines see each other, files
are available, everything works.

I've used Zone Alarm for years on standalone machines, giving
applications permission to access the net, denying others permission
and and always the changes were acted on immediately, never have I had
to "save" any before they became effective.

My deepest apologies to Mortimer and LR, and indeed to anyone to took
the time to read the post.

Geoff