I am not having much success getting a Desktop to network with a Dell Inspiron 6000 Laptop computer. The desktop has XP Home and the Laptop OS is XP Prof. I am using the ethernet ports and have run Network Wizard on both computers assigning the same Workgroup and different names to each computer.
After a lot of trial and error and investigation on an earlier occasion, I found mentioned in a book that both computers need to have the Guest account turned on and have done this.
What I cannot understand is that without any change of settings if I switch the ethernet connection to another Laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400 running XP home) directories and files are accessible on both computers.
If I just link up the two Laptops, again files and directories are accessible.
But when connection is switched to the Desktop and Inspiron 6000 and they are restarted, without any change of settings, I get warnings saying no permission or path not found.
Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
apached

Access across a workgroup is governed by the permissions in the Guest account. If the Guest account cannot access the files that you're looking for, then you won't be able to see them on the network.

The easiest workaround for this is to make identical user accounts with identical passwords (DO NOT rename existing accounts) on each of the computers.

Thanks for the suggestion on User Accounts. Will give it a try.
JUst to clarify the earlier post: Computer A (Desktop) and Computer B (Inspiron 6400) can access each other fine.
When the ethernet cable is used to link Computer B and Computer C,(Inspiron 6000) also no problem.
Without any change of settings , when Computer A is connected to Computer C and they are restarted it results in path not found and no permission messages.
Computer C is running XP professional and had a wireless broadband card. Need to transfer downloaded files to Computer A
The only way I can do it at present is connect C and B and then connect B to A to get the files across

Very frustrating !!

!!

After repeated attempts running Network Wizard with different settings and ensuring Windows Firewall Exceptions were active, I am ,happy to report that have finally managed to network the two computers. And the culprit.....Zone Alarm.
The error messages ...Not Accessible... No Permission... Path Not Found....Ask Administrator gave no clue. Since Zone Alarm runs in the background and only warns of programs trying to Access the Internet, it never occurred to me that it would block network access without any warning. For file transfer between Computers A and B, I was using a program called SynToy. Only when I did a Directory search using Windows Explorer and was refused access did I realise that SynToy was somehow bypassing Zone Alarm, This was the reason it appeared that Computers A & B were communicating , and computers B & C but not Computers A and C. ( Only Computer A has Zone Alarm installed !!
Hope that all makes sense and will serve as a warning to others.