Hi,
Apologies if this has been covered, but after extensive searching I can't find any answers.
I'm trying to connect up my new vista laptop to my old xp desktop.
I've used the xp wizard to 'add new computers to network', using a usb flash drive. When I have first done this everything seemed fine; my desktop was visible and usable, along with its printer, then after a restart the desktop computer was no longer visible from the laptop. 'Re-adding' the laptop to the network did't sort things out, however creating a new network and adding the laptop to it temporarily sorted things out until restart.

first restart of the laptop the desktop had become visible again and I went to bed thinking things were sorted, but on powering up the next morning the desktop had once again become invisible to the laptop.
In the nework and sharing center I'm getting the message: "For sharing and discovery to work properly, make sure the settings in your firewall program match the following settings", but have no idea how to to do this. I have a Belkin wireless router which is configured via a web browser.
Any assistance gratefully received!

Wally - If you have McAfee (or Norton or maybe others) you also have to root around in there to enable the home network addresses you have thru your home router. Before I did that in McAfee, the order in which I turned on the Vista and XPs affected file sharing being enabled. Now it doesn't matter - sounds sort of like what you are encountering.
"wally zoo.co.uk" wrote:

Follow these guidelines from MS. Also, set all computers to use NetBIOS over TCPIP in the properties for the network connection, both Vista and XP.
microsoft.com/technet/network/evaluate/vista_fp.mspx