7-XP Lan Help!

[hour9]

I am trying to play a lan game with two laptops (xp and windows 7) with a eithernet cable directly connecting the two laptops. In the lobby the windows 7 computer can see the other player and the text from the other player as well as games available but can not join games hosted by the xp computer. the xp computer can not see any information from the 7 computer what so ever. So far I have tried fiddling with setting and totally disable all firewalls on the xp computer that does not seem to read from the 7 but no luck.

[Bolkonsky]

Is the XP computer in the same home-group as the Windows 7 PC? Can you access the XP shared folders from the 7 PC over the network? There's lots of hoops you have to jump through to get 7 and XP to "talk to each other" over the network.

[PoleCat]

What kind of cable are you using to connect the two systems? I'm not sure if this is relevant anymore but in the past you'd need to use a crossover cable. Is that Ethernet cable a crossover cable? You can't just use any old cable out of the box to connect two systems together in null-modem fashion - at least not with a Windows system. Good luck!

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Is the XP computer in the same home-group as the Windows 7 PC?

"Home Group" is exclusive to Windows 7 and does not work with Vista or XP.

[Bolkonsky]

"Home Group" is exclusive to Windows 7 and does not work with Vista or XP.

The term Home-Group is, but you still have to connect them in a similar fashion. You'll need a password.

What kind of cable are you using to connect the two systems? I'm not sure if this is relevant anymore but in the past you'd need to use a crossover cable. Is that Ethernet cable a crossover cable? You can't just use any old cable out of the box to connect two systems together in null-modem fashion - at least not with a Windows system. Good luck!

He'd need to have them both going through a router or some other sort of special hardware to connect them.