Will Win 7 (Pro) ever play nice with Win XP?

I have a Win 7 Pro machine, 2 Win 7 Home Premium machines, and 2 Win XP Pro machines that all SHOULD be on the same network (sharing files and printers). Win 7 does not seem to "want" to create anything other than a homegroup, ant it will not let XP join. To make matters worse, digging into one of my Win 7 books I found a blurb that a "wireless network" (even with ethernet connections to the router) cannot be joined without a wireless connection.

With XP, making everything work was easy. It is beginning to look like we will have to replace 2 machines (too old for Win 7 to be an option) just to share things.

Ideas or pointers to a (or more) really good book on connecting these OSs together would be gratefully accepted.

 

See if this will help you out - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/...mputers-running-different-versions-of-Windows

XP cannot join a home group, that is a win7 feature only.
If you want to leave a homegroup on your win7 machines, click on Start and type in homegroup and near the bottom of the window that opens is an option to leave the homegroup.

The wireless network your book is referring to may be an adhoc network that is a temporary wireless connection between wireless devices. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd296746.aspx

 

You can not connect any machines that are not running Windows 7 to Homegroup. Homegroup is only good for Windows 7 machines.

 

Just simply create a "workgroup". Name it anything you wish and make sure all of the systems are on the "workgroup" that you created. Then the systems will see each other....also, make sure you create the "workgroup" on an XP system and then join the other computers to the "workgroup" by right clicking computer and clicking on properties. then click change and rename the workgroup. Hope this helps.