A big unsuccessful effort to connect my sister's desktop WinXP machine to my neice's Win98 laptop. Ran up the degree of difficulty by trying to configure two computers at once. The two are talking to each other via TCP/IP but cannot share files -- probably a Windows XP problem.

I tried to duplicate the problem at my parent's place by connecting my laptop to the WinXP desktop here -- a simpler job bvecause I know that the laptop is okay. Unfortunately, this works just fine and the two are communicating with each other and sharing perinters and modems and the like.

I am reading "Windows XP for dummies". There must be some way to do this.