Wireless Network Not Showing?

Hi all,

So I have my XP desktop and my new Vista Acer Aspire 5100 that I wanted to get my music collection to. My desktop is connected to a linksys wrt54g wireless router, which is connected to my cable box. i had disabled the wireless feature on my router since I didn't use it, but now I'm thinking the easiest way to transfer my music collection would be via a network. ive never created a home network before tho, and i dont even know if what i want to do is possible (although im guessing it is)

so i re-enabled the wireless for my router, and it took me a while but i got my laptop to connect to it. It can now access the internet from the laptop, so I'm guessing that's a positive step, but not sure what to do now. i right-clicked my music folder to be shared on the network, but on my laptop i go computer->network and there is nothing showing. like i said, just want to copy my music collection from one computer to another. thoughts? thanks a ton, you are guys are awesome

EDIT: I also installed ZoneAlarm on both computers, but checked for the IP on both computers and put those under the safe zone, but still no change.

 

If you don't WANT to HAVE to set up a network then try 1 thing. Download simple center and use the DLNA available on WMP11 to take all the music from one PC to another.

 

So supposed I did want to go that DLNA route, how would i do it, or is there a guide online? I didn't find one in my quick google search..

but any other suggestions on getting my network setup anyway?

 

UPDATE:

So on the vista laptop it wasn't showing my xp deskstop on the network map. i went to microsoft's website to find a file to fix this, and once installed, it showed up on the network map just fine. so now when im looking at the map on vista, i can see both.

but how do i go from seeing the desktop to being able to share files? im pretty sure i selected "share files" on both computers (although i might have missed a small step, not sure) and i also turned zonealarm off in favor of the windows firewall just to be safe. help?

 

turn off za totally

do you have passwords set up on vista or xp, thats often a major probelm, the other being a firewall

can you ping the other computer?

 

So for anyone who might have the same problem later and needs answers, I eventually did get everything to work okay. One problem that I had was that i would not have my laptop plugged into my network before I turned it on, and this was a must because otherwise it would be able to connect to the internet but it wouldn't recognize my desktop that was on under the network (the network map feature vista has comes in really handy...it also lets you see the IP addresses of other computers that are on the network).

So after I had them both restarted and plugged in, I needed to input their IP addresses on ZA to be allowed, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get access to my laptop via my desktop. The workgroup name also had to be the same, which I originally thought it was, but noticed that it was different at some point by accident. So ZA could still work, and after turning file-sharing on for both computers, I was able to share a folder on my laptop where I wanted the music to go, and then just copy it over. This was of course after trying to access the laptop via My Computer, and it would access me for a user name and password, which were the same as the user and pass on the laptop.

The only thing that I never did figure out though was how to go from my laptop to my desktop. Under the desktop I could click Network Places, then the workgroup, then see my two computers listed, but this was only from the desktop. The laptop, however, only showed two things when I clicked on the network button. One was my router, which listed as WRT54G, and the other was some Windows Peripheral device I think it said. But either way, I couldn't find a way to go from laptop to desktop. Luckily I didn't need to, but if anyone has any particular questions, I'd be happy to try and answer in the future.

Thanks again for anyone who offered advice.