I have a home network with two computers, one has xp pro and a laptop with home edition. I had them networked before, but I took the laptop into bestbuys geek squad to have them put a new hard drive in it and since I brought it back the network has not worked. from the laptop I can see the computers in the workgroup, but when i click on them it says access denied, but from the desktop I cannot when I click on view all computer in my network places it says it cannot find the list of servers on the workgroup and errors out. but when the laptop is off and is not connected to the network I can see the computers in my network places on the desktop. also I can access the computers by their ip address just not by their name, I can also ping by ip address but not by name, I think it has something to do with dns or netbeui but I have checked everything that I can think of and all setting are good. I do not see why it is not working. btw I do have a norton firewall program but even with it disabled and or 100% uninstalled it still does not work any ideas?

The problem is I took the laptop into bestbuys geek squad to have them put a new hard drive in it. Any time you bring your PC to a national PC repair chain like Geek Squad, they do the work the easy way - just dump the old HD, install a new one in its place, and reload the OS. You need to reconfigure your connection the same way you did it the first time. i_Xp/VistaUser

I have reconfigured all of the network connections like I did the first time but still no go. here is a wierd piece of info. if I install nw ipx protocal on both machines it works great, why? I would prefer not to use the nw ipx protocal what can I do?