Shared Folders do not appear in MyNetwork hierachy

[Spinman]

I have 2 computers - loaded with XP-Home SP2 over the weekend. Therefore a clean install on each - no accumulated garbage - no 3rd party software installed. Default MS firewall setting off.

Computer "A" seems to have loaded properly (whatever that means) - when I check 'My Network Places' in windows explorer - I can see the shared folders from Computer "A" listed as a sub line - along with entire network\microsoft network\workgroup.

Computer "B" (my problem child) does not display the shared folders from Computer "B" under 'My Network Places'. As I drill down through the hierachy - I eventually get the message that I have seen others report - about access being denied and to check with their system administrator (me).

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I then setup a USB wireless point on "B" and a PCI wireless point on "A". I am able to lock on to the signal and affect a peer to peer connection (no router access point) - but that is as far as I can get. "A" will not display any of the shared folders from "B" and "B" will not display any of the shared folders from "B" or "A". I'm sure the fact that shared folders from "B" do not appear on the host machine is the reason that they are not available over the connection on "A".

Why is "B" not showing the shared folders under My Network Places?

BTW - in addition to the default shared folders - I have also established 2 slave drives as shared network devices - so they should appear as well... (have the hand underneath).

Does this sound like a software problem? I have a fully loaded machine - yet I can't imagine that it would be hardware related (defective part or irq conflicts, etc...) With the exception of this networking problem - everything else seems to work perfectly.

BTW - I've tried the motherboard based LAN and a PCI LAN card - and each fails to load properly. Others have told me that the devices are defective. Now with the failure of USB wireless to work properly - I'm wondering if there is a software setting that is affecting all 3 methods of networking - or if something else is in play. I have disabled the motherboard LAN via bios, so hopefully that is now out of the picture.

I think I need to resolve the lack of local machine shared files in My Network before tackling the actual connectivity problems.

Appreciate any thoughts...

Thanks!

[Spinman]

Finally got everything to work - but don't know why I had to do it the way I did.

I booted into safe mode - at which point an unspecified device loaded.

Rebooted and returned to normal mode - no improvement.

Rebooted and returned to safe mode.

Reconfigured entire network settings in safe mode.

Renamed PC and Workgroup

Rebooted back into safe mode

Renamed PC and Workgroup

Rebooted back into normal mode.

System partially correct.

Rebooted back into normal mode.

System stable and works perfectly (for at least the last hour).

Very strange....