Unable to see shared directories on host

[Bob R]

I just installed on a new Windows 7 Pro machine with Windows XP Home installed as the Guest and am able to run some legacy 16 bit programs successfully. I am able to access the D: drive on the host by using the Shared Folder setting, I can also access the G: drive on the host- but it gets assigned as drive E: and it has to be G:

I've removed the G: Shared Folder drive and am now trying to access it by sharing from the host. I set drive G: as shared on the host and I have a user account there that matches the name and password of the login from the guest. On a totally separate Windows XP desktop I am now able to see the G: drive on Windows 7.

However, on the WIndows XP Guest [my Network places] I cant see any shared drive and I don't even see the host machine. Pressing "View workgroup computers" gives an error - mshome not accessable

[noteirak]

From your description, it seems you are using regular network shares. Make sure you've set the networking mode to either Host-Only or Bridged and that you proper network settings on your guest.

[Perryg]

IIRC the workgroup changed between xp and w7. They need to be in the same workgroup as well.
xp= workgroup by default
w7 = homegroup by default

[Bob R]

Thanks - I had fixed the workgroup name problem already - changing to bridged fixes it - though I have no idea why- since its been years since I messed around with hardware networking details, [and it also fixed another problem that I'll start another thread to discuss]

[noteirak]

I bet you were in NAT mode before - that mode is only meant for basic usage, like web browsing. Anything a bit more specific would require a proper network config.
In case of network shares, it is because it relies on being on the same subnet and/or having a reachable IP, which is not the case for NAT on one side of the connection.