Sharing USB Drives between XP and Win7 Options

[s1mp13m4n]

Hello everyone. In the kitchen I have a WinXP tower with an AIO printer and two 160GB USB drives connected to it. I have the printer and both USB drives shared within WinXP. I can use the printer from my Win7 laptop over a wired network. However, I can not see or figure out how to gain access to those USB drives on the WinXO PC from my Win7 laptop. How do I set this up? Thanks for the help.

[Delta16]

This might help you .

http://ecross.mvps.org/howto/share.htm

[s1mp13m4n]

Thanks for that, but I already have WinXP set to share the drives. I am having trouble getting Win7 to find, see, and use the drives. In WinXP you had My Network Places, but I am not sure how to find those shared/networked drives in Win7 and use them.

[windows.user]

Do you have Firewall software running on your XP computer?

I installed Esett Nod32 Firewall Suite on both my XP and Win7 and now I am unable to access remotely either of these computers NO MATTER what I do or settings I change or disable the software. I just gave up.

Since these are USB drives why not just unplug them from the XP machine and plug them into Win7 and when you use the XP machine move the drives back?

Have you tried XP mode in win7? Have to have at least win 7 Pro and hardware to support virtualization, may require a bios update or bios setting change.

I have been using XP mode for what software that does not work in Win 7. If it doesn't work in Vista it wont work in Win 7.
I just install only the software that wont work in Win 7 in XP mode and I now use this laptop as my main computer.

Though you do have to have the hardware to support this or your computer will freeze up at the max or come to a crawl at the best.

Here are somethings to try if you can get software firewall to let the remote access to work, if you have a software firewall.


1: Set Mac Address of your Win 7 machine to access network
2: Set XP to share folder and files with network, make sure correct user and permissions are set
3: Turn off or Uninstall software firewall on XP machine

If you still can not get access to the XP computer at all then there is something blocking access in the XP computer. Windows Firewall, 3rd Party Firewall / AV possibly both...

Those are only things I can think of.

[s1mp13m4n]

Thank you for the help. I only have the stock Windows firewall in use on both WinXP and Win7. The PC's are in the same house connected to the same Linksys wired router. The reason that I want to have the USB drives connected to the XP machine is that it is a desktop and it has a better DVDRW drive in it. The Win7 machine is a laptop with Win7 and Linux on it and for some reason the DVD drive does not work as well in it with any disc that is not almost perfect with no scratches and such. I can have the USB drives out of the way when connected to the WinXP desktop where I can not do that because of room and space with the laptop. I have WinXP and Win7 setup so I can remotely log into the WinXP machine, but I can not figure out how to make Win7 see the USB drives which are shared in the WinXP desktop.