I'm running a Dell laptop (2.0 gHz, 256 MB, XP Home) along with a Compaq desktop (900 mHz, 128 MB, Win ME). The laptop is connected wirelessly to a router, which the desktop is also physically connected to. I was able to map the ME hard drive to XP by sharing the C drive on the desktop and doing a Map Network Drive, entering //192.168.2.3/C. That worked, but when I tried entering the laptop's IP (192.168.2.2) into ME, I got a 'not logged on' message. Is this because the laptop isn't physically connected to the router? What can I do to let the XP hard drive be seen in ME, if it's at all possible?

i dont understand

to view a hard drive on another computer there has to be some kind of connection whether it be via the router, hub, switch or wot ever

??

Regards, Jamie McCoy

Are you sure that you do the connect thing. I do not believe your command will access to other machine hard drive. Here what you have to do instead: //192.168.2.3/C$ not //192.168.2.3/C and you have to logon as a super user in other machine.

For your case, I believe that you have both machine either in a difference subnet or in a difference workgroup.

Here is what you need to try:
Making sure that both machine in the same subnet.
Making sure that both machine is in the same workgroup.
If you are sastisfy those 2 above, then reset all machine, router... because some router require the reset when you change some configuration or it will remember the last one.

After that you will find both machine in the networkneighborhood. If you want to see the whole hard drive you can do: //ipAddress/dirvelellter$
if you want to see the share drive only not the whole drive, you can do //ipAddress you will see such share folder, share drive, printers...

Recommendation:
Do not share the whole drive, by default windows XP will have one share drive allow you to share files between machine. If you want to see the whole drive, just run the above command.

Here is a couple hint step by step to debug your configuration:
1. Making sure that you can ping other machine ip.
2. Making sure that the sharing files service is running.
3. Making sure the workgroup is the same.
4. Making sure that the 2 ip or machine name are not the same.
Then you are good to go.

Goodluck

you need to have the same account name and password on the xp box as you logged in with on the ME box.