Dear experts in Networking, I am having a very, very tough time in setting up my laptop for use with my Home LAN and office LAN. First off, my home LAN consists of a cable modem, linksys wireless router, 2 Win XP desktops hooked to router by LAN, and 1 WinXP laptop that I use WLAN or just LAN to connect to the home network. When I setup WinXP at home on my laptop for the very first time, it has absolutely no problems in connecting my home network either by LAN or WLAN. The problem arises after I connect my laptop to the office LAN. My office uses a domain controller for login (please excuse my lack of knowledge in networking terminology if I use this term incorrectly). In other words, when I login, I have to enter a domain name in addition to my username & password. I have tried a few different ways to login to my office LAN, so that when I go home I could get it to connect to my home LAN. But all attempts were unsuccessful. My first attempt, was to use the Network Identification Wizard to directly join the domain and create a local user account. My second attempt, was to boot the computer using my local account and then open up windows explorer->My Network Places->Entire Network->Microsoft Windows Network->(list of different domains) and then connect to one of the domains when it prompts for username & password. But every time, no matter how I connect to my office network, once it has been connected, I cannot see my other 2 computers when I attempt to connect back to my home LAN from My network places. It just says something like your access is denied or you don't have permission to access this network. However, my other 2 computers can see my laptop under My Network Places, but it can never connect to it. However, I can ping the 2 desktop computers at home using command prompt from my laptop, but only when the 2 computers can see me under My network places (even though it cannot connect to the laptop). Come to think of it, I don't think I've tried pinging the laptop from the desktop computers. Mind you, I've setup all the necessary procedures for file sharing on all computers. Another interesting thing is that I can still connect to the internet, either by WLAN or LAN at home using my laptop even if I cannot connect to my other 2 computers. I have tried using a software by Globesoft, called MultiNetwork Manager v6.3 to setup different connection settings for home LAN and office LAN. You can configure TCP/IP settings, mapping of network drives, domain/workgroup settings, share drives, Environment (not sure what this is), Windows Registry settings, and some other things as well. I have noticed that there are changes in the Windows Registry before and after connecting to the Office LAN. I remember it has something to do with the identity and the login process. But Windows registry is something that is really not what I have much knowledge about. Another thing is that I have no problems connecting back to the office LAN after having attempted to connect back to my home LAN. May I please ask for your sincere advise on how I can make it to connect on both home and Office LAN. Do you think joining the domain (at office LAN) and creating a local user account is a better approach, in terms of wanting to connect back to home LAN. If registry settings are crucial to making my home LAN work again, which registry keys should I ask MultiNetwork Manager to back up from my home LAN settings? My only solution now is to restore the image on my laptop every time I get home. :( Thanks so much in advance for any good advice. this was an old post i found here earlier, and i was having the same problem. anyone know how to fix it?

Please place this in the networking forum in future