connecting vista to xp via cross over cable

[iron man]

me and my friend are trying to set up file sharing between his laptop(vista) and my desktop(xp sp3) via a crossover cable. we've litterally been through hundreds of forums but none seem to be helping. when connecting the laptop shows unidentified network. we have set files to be shared but none of them are viewable. fire walls are also switched off and the name of work group is the same. we pinged the connection using the command prompt. it said sent 4 recieved 4 with 0 errors.

thanks

 

[rurapente]

pinged what? eachother? did you assign each an ip address?

did you add the IP to each machine's hosts file?

 

[iron man]

pinged what? eachother? did you assign each an ip address?

did you add the IP to each machine's hosts file?

ip address yes. whats host file?

 

[rurapente]

example
---------
Laptop IP = 10.0.0.1
Desktop IP = 10.0.0.2
Subnet Mask on each is set to 255.255.255.0

On Laptop,
open Notepad
open c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
at the end of the file, enter a new line
type
desktop 10.0.0.2

On the Desktop:
open c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
at the end of the file add a line with;
laptop 10.0.0.1

Save on both.

Now ping laptop from desktop, or desktop from laptop. Should see eachother fine.

Now do \\laptop or \\desktop from either one and it should open the available shares on the other.

If you find you get logon problems, use this command from the laptop

net use l: \\desktop\<sharename> /user:desktop\<username>
press enter and enter the password.
obviously dont use the <>'s

Now if you open explorer you have L: as a disk which is the share on the other machine.

You only need to do it to one, to copy files between them.

 

[gregmcc]

You dont need to add the IP to the hosts file - just use the IP address when referencing the machine.

do a "net view \\IP Address" from a dos box
then try
net use \\IP\share

Running it from a dos box will give you friendlier error messages that doing a start/run \\IP

 

[iron man]

thanks guys but we gave up. fail microsoft

 

[syntax]

thanks guys but we gave up. fail microsoft

whilst i love microsoft bashing, somehow I dont think the fail was on their side this time

 

[Sackboy]

Fail for making it so complex.