XP Pro to Xp pro Problems

Heres what i have :

Wired Router - used for DSL and Networking
XP Pro Box - usual useage
XP Pro Laptop - usual usage


The laptop can see and transfer between the XP box - no probs there
The Box CAN see the laptop but can't communicate with it, when ever i try to acces it i just get the Access Error - even thou i know the user and password i am using are right....Any ideas ?

I had a problem like this at home for a while, and although my solution is probably not the most elegant out there, it worked.

My problem was originally caused by having different users setup and logged in on the different XP boxes. I set up the different Xp machines to all login using the same user name (admin, bob, whatever) and it made file/printer sharing across the home workgroup much easier...

Again, someone else probably has a "more correct" solution, but this may be something to try...

Suggest you look at firewall settings on XP Pro laptop - ensure the IP address of the other XP Box is entered into the trusted zone on the laptop. I had the one way see but no sharing of files or printers and once I updated the Zonealarm firewall problems went away.

I'm probably way off here, but when you enter username for the connection, do you just type in the name...? I have run into this frequently, and the solution have been to map the drive with computername\username. So if you want to map a drive on your laptop from your Box, you need to enter "laptopname\username" as username. (Without the quotation marks of course ) Where "laptopname" is the network name of your laptop, or the ip-adress.