Tips for networking Win7 with XP

[tsc]

To get my Win7 wireless laptop networking properly with my XP Pro SP3 wired
desktop PC I had to make the following changes. I'll describe them in non
technical language and you can Google for them. It was by Googling that I
found them but no one told me I had to do all three. Different systems and
levels of patching and updating mean that there is no single solution for
all incompatibilities between Win7 and XP.

1) On the Win7 laptop I had to insert a new entry in the registry called
LMCompatibilityLevel and give it a value of 1.

2) On the XP desktop PC I had to uncheck the Microsoft TCP/IP version 6,
making sure to keep file and printer sharing checked. You find this by
clicking on the Properties of the active network icon under Network
Connections. Leave the other TCP/IP entry checked.

3) I had to patch the XP desktop PC with the Link-Layer Topology Discovery
Responder. I did it using a hotfix download.

Only when I had made all three of the above changes did the two machines see
each other properly on the network and allow file, folder, and drive sharing
to proceed. I hope this helps other people.

 

[Mortimer]

To get my Win7 wireless laptop networking properly with my XP Pro SP3
wired desktop PC I had to make the following changes. I'll describe them
in non technical language and you can Google for them. It was by Googling
that I found them but no one told me I had to do all three. Different
systems and levels of patching and updating mean that there is no single
solution for all incompatibilities between Win7 and XP.

1) On the Win7 laptop I had to insert a new entry in the registry called
LMCompatibilityLevel and give it a value of 1.

2) On the XP desktop PC I had to uncheck the Microsoft TCP/IP version 6,
making sure to keep file and printer sharing checked. You find this by
clicking on the Properties of the active network icon under Network
Connections. Leave the other TCP/IP entry checked.

3) I had to patch the XP desktop PC with the Link-Layer Topology Discovery
Responder. I did it using a hotfix download.

Only when I had made all three of the above changes did the two machines
see each other properly on the network and allow file, folder, and drive
sharing to proceed. I hope this helps other people.

It's interesting that you had to do all that. I've got XP Home SP3, Vista
Home Premium and Win 7 Home Premium desktops connected by Ethernet and a
Vista laptop connected by wireless, and everything just worked. Maybe the
difference in your case is that the Win 7 is wireless.

The settings on Network and Sharing Center on Win 7 are:

- Network discovery = Off
- File sharing = On
- Public folder sharing = On
- Printer sharing = On
- Password protected sharing = Off
- Media Sharing = On

All the PCs have the default TCP settings (I haven't had to turn off IPv6)
and I didn't need to change the LM Compatibility Level.

There's the usual problem with accessing shared folders in the
\users\<username> tree structure - why do MS make so many pitfalls with
permissions? - and I ended up putting all the important stuff that I want
other PCs to see in \users\public. It was so much easier in the days of Win
3.1 and share-level security: set a read-only and a read-write password on a
share and require other PCs to supply one or other of these passwords to
establish a connection: if they can do this, they can access everything
within there.

 

[tsc]

It's interesting that you had to do all that. I've got XP Home SP3, Vista
Home Premium and Win 7 Home Premium desktops connected by Ethernet and a
Vista laptop connected by wireless, and everything just worked. Maybe the
difference in your case is that the Win 7 is wireless.

The settings on Network and Sharing Center on Win 7 are:

- Network discovery = Off
- File sharing = On
- Public folder sharing = On
- Printer sharing = On
- Password protected sharing = Off
- Media Sharing = On

All the PCs have the default TCP settings (I haven't had to turn off IPv6)
and I didn't need to change the LM Compatibility Level.

There's the usual problem with accessing shared folders in the
\users\<username> tree structure - why do MS make so many pitfalls with
permissions? - and I ended up putting all the important stuff that I want
other PCs to see in \users\public. It was so much easier in the days of
Win 3.1 and share-level security: set a read-only and a read-write
password on a share and require other PCs to supply one or other of these
passwords to establish a connection: if they can do this, they can access
everything within there.

Thanks for the information. It's queer how sensitive the operating systems
appear to be to each other. I shall experiment with your settings to see
what happens here. But not just straightaway. It was such a slog to get
these two machines talking to each other, I don't want to upset them for a
bit. I had Network Discovery on. Using a Workgroup, not a Homegroup. I
haven't yet found a way to control whether a network password has to be set.
Use of the public folder might my way out. I agree that Win7's networking
abilities are unwieldy and badly explained by Microsoft.

 

[Windows7Guy]

Hello there,
You can checkout this article with regard to Windows7: Homegroups -does work a bit differently in comparison to Windows XP.
http://tinyurl.com/yhzc4k5
To learn more about Windows 7 Security Enhancements please go here:
http://tinyurl.com/cjzygv
John M
Microsoft Windows Client Support