Windows 7 won’t find XP, Samba, or other windows servers

IMHO Win 7 is very confusing about file sharing/networking. It needs some sort of “Expert” mode where you can see what it’s trying to do.

From what I understand, Win 7 implements “new stuff” for file sharing that makes it not work out of the box with other non -win 7 systems.

See this article for enabling Win 7 file sharing:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/ecda546e-5fa0-4c09-9f3c-3bd132c1be68

The other thing needed was to put entries in the hosts file (see problem about no way to edit the file!) for all servers on the other side of the VPN. Looking at my older XP systems some had some in them, others not. But as those were setup 5+ years ago I really can’t remember if it was required.