I Can See Homegroup Drives But Cannot Access

[20Valve]

Greetings Geeks -

I am trying to sort out some Seagate Dashboard, as per my last post. In an attempt to gain an understanding of things, I decided to explore some Homegroup connectivity stuff. To put my situation i perspective, I am savvy overall, but networking is my kryptonite. Anyway, here it goes . . .

I have a Windows 7 desktop. I have a functional wireless router. As far as I can tell, I have a home group properly set up. I set my desktop, printers, and such to be shared by everyone with access to the network. When I attempt to connect to the desktop via my home group with my Vista laptop, I can see the printers, devices, and shared folders, etc., but I cannot access any of the folders. I receive an error message to the effect that there is a problem and I need to check the spelling of the home group and such.

Any ideas? Thanks for any help

[tgell]

Homegroup is actually accessible only between Windows 7 computers . But, it can be tweaked. Check the following link.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/win...ta-and-xp/1910

In those blog posts, I explained that only computers running Windows 7 can actually participate in a HomeGroup. I then went on to explain that in addition to supporting HomeGroups, Windows 7 can participate in a standard workgroup network configuration with XP and Vista systems and can be configured to share folders and access shared folders just like XP and Vista systems can.

However, there is another possible scenario — Windows XP and Vista systems that can access content shared in HomeGroup. Of course, this type of configuration requires a bit of tweaking, but it is possible.

[20Valve]

tgell -

Thanks for the info. I set things up as prescribed with no luck. Same result. On a positive note, I got the Seagate Dashboard (another drive with interface software) working. Not through their crappy software though. The drive shows up in the network tab with the other stuff I can't access from my desktop. The Seagate Dashboard drive is connected to the desktop as well.

So, it seems I have other gremlins at work. I am not sure I am going to bother trying to get the thing working over the network anymore. I will mess around a little more with the stuff you sent me, but I am not sure I want to budget my time just to get a USB HD working on a network with a Vista machine!

Thanks for the help!