troubleshooting home network
 

I have a home desktop and a home laptop. I would like to share files and a
printer between them. After enormous effort, no success. After following the
steps in the MS Help and Support-troubleshoot home networking article ID
308007, it appears there is a problem with connectivity and/or name
resolution on one or both of them.

I have no ping on the laptop. It will ping itself but not the desktop
(with Windows firewall on). The laptop also has McAfee Antivirus Enterprise
8.0.0 (that interferes with everything-not upgradeable-another story). The
desktop will ping itself and the laptop (with Windows firewall on). Both will
only ping using IP addresses, neither will ping any names.

Desktop is Windows XP Home SP3, laptop is Windows XP Home SP2 (unresolved
issue with MS update), connected to a 2Wire 2701HG-B home gateway (dsl with
multiple ethernet ports and wireless connectivity. Both IP addresses appear
normal. aaa.bbb.c.64 (desktop) and aaa.bbb.c.67 (laptop).

I believe it worked at one time, since My Network Places on the laptop shows
folders on the desktop, but My Network Places on the desktop shows no folders
on any other computers (there is one other desktop and one other laptop in my
home but I don't think any work on the home network).

When I click on the Shared Folders on the desktop computer (from my admin
account), I get an error message:

\(desktop)\shareddocs is not accessible. You might not have permission to
use this network resource.Contact the administrator of this server to find
out if you have access permissions.
The network path was not found.

I only have XP Home, and I'm the only administrator on both. I don't know
anything about any permissions.

My Network Places only shows up in my desktop user account (no My Network
Place in my admin account).

I cannot tell you how much time I have spent trying to chase this down. I'm
not the most computer literate guy in the world, but it doesn't seem like it
should have to be this difficult.

Thanks in advance and any assistance is appreciated.