I've never understood workgroups - and to keep things simple in the past have simply insisted that anyone wanting to get their computer on our house LAN/WAN would have to change to "WORKGROUP" so they can get at all the shared stuff.

But there's a new (work) laptop (running XP) in the house and I thought before I go upsetting all the work-related settings I'd check here first to see if I've been blindly missing a trick until now.

In the first instance I'd simply like to set up a network location on the laptop to the house music library folder - but the laptop doesn't offer "Computers near me" in Network locations... how do I make it look harder?

I can "see" the laptop connected to the network switch (LAN) in our modem's browser-utility but beyond that I don't really know what to do... any pointers anyone?

Simply type the fully qualified network address of the music folder into explorer. That's explorer as in "My Computer", and not internet explorer - they're not the same thing any more.

For example, on my network I'd open \\glory\music or \\192.168.7.201\music from any PC on the network.

You can then drag this to "my network places" if it doesn't appear automatically, or create a shortcut anywhere you want.

Cheers JJ.

Just to be sure, that'd be the shared folders as opposed to the (unshared) volume they sit on yes?

How do I go about "getting" that fully qualified network address to show up in Explorer's address bar? The folders all only say "T:\" for location.

I'm not sure what you mean? You just type it in.

Are you using a mapped T: drive on the clients? If so, then if you click tools - map network drive you'll see a drop down list of the letters A - Z and where they're mapped to. The address you want will be next to T.

I think I'm really failing at explaining myself / the problem properly. Going back to the beginning...

Computer (Win 2K SP4 / IP: 192.168.1.81 / Name: Beefcake / Workgroup = WORKGROUP /Physical Partitions : C, K. M & T )
|
Shared Folder Name : Movies / Shared Folder Location: \\Beefcake\T:\
|
Cat 5 LAN
|
Network Switch > Modem > WWW
|
Cat 5 LAN
|
Laptop (Win XP Pro / IP: 192.168.1.82 / Name: Laptop / Workgroup = <COMPANY NAME> )

Present Situation:
1. Both Computer & Laptop can quite happily access the net
2. The Laptop shows up on the Computer's "Computers Near Me" - but can not be accessed.
3. The Computer doesn't show up anywhere on the Laptop - not in "My Network Places" or via "Entire Network">"Microsoft Windows Network"
4. The Shared folder(s) are all set to : Everyone / Full permission

I have tried:
1. Typing \\192.168.1.81\ into an Explorer address bar on the Laptop - and get nothing
2. Typing \\192.168.1.81\T:\ into an Explorer address bar on the Laptop - and get nothing
3. Typing \\192.168.1.81\T\ into an Explorer address bar on the Laptop - and get nothing
4: Typing \\192.168.1.81\T\Movies\ into an Explorer address bar on the Laptop - and get nothing
(by "nothing" I mean I get access rights / volume can not be found errors)

What am I doing wrong?

<EDIT>Typo in key section of information corrected </EDIT>

Shouldn't you be typing \\192.168.1.81 in?

Yes, that's a typo, arghhhhh!

You need the name of the share. I would expect it to be "movies", so you'd type:

\\192.168.1.81\movies\

You should even be able to just type that into the RUN box.

If it doesn't work, then you need to check what the name of the share is. What exactly does it look like in the address bar on the other computers that can see it?