This is driving me insane!

I recieved a Toshiba A70 laptop on a trade, and I just reformatted it last night and put Windows XP Service Pack 2 on it. I have a HP Pavilion desktop with Windows Vista.

I'm trying to set up a file sharing network between the two, so while I'm in my house, I can share documents and files between the two. Laptop is wireless, and the desktop is wired into the router via ethernet cable.

I've looked at the Microsoft articles, and installed a certain update on the XP machine. No avail. I had a network setup a long time ago with my old laptop and my old desktop, but they were both running XP.

I can't seem to get the two to connect...

Hello Gearstix and welcome,

Can both systems connect to the internet through the router?
What security products are installed on each system? A firewall is designed to prevent unauthorised access to your system, the systems in question might be aware of each other but the firewall is not allowing them to metaphorically talk to each other.
http://www.networkmagic.com/ might help solve the problem.

Sorry, what I meant is I cannot get the two to network together. Both are connected to the internet, and I am writing this on my laptop which is wireless.
Both have AVG Free for anti virus and no firewall.

On the XP laptop, press the run key and the windows key. type cmd and press enter. a new window will appear. type ipconfig and press enter.

You will need to make a note of
1. IP address,
2. Subnet mask,
3. Default gateway.

Do this again on the vista laptop and make note of the above.

The IP address is the name of the computer which should be different from the other system.
The Subnet mask is the 'group' the computers belong too which should be the same.
The default gateway is the router. both computers should have the same default gateway.

it all checks out.

That is good, its configured correctly then.

Now to see if they can communicate with each other, on the XP machine bring up the command prompt (cmd) and use the ping function. The ping function is a utility that will in essence say hello to another computer and wait for a response.

Type ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where 'x' is the IP address for the other computer. eg ping 123.123.123.123 it should ping the other computer a few times and return information.
Take note of the TTL and the % package loss.

Also forgot to mention, try the above on the vista machine too.