I am about to pull every hair in my head out. This should NOT be this difficult.

Up until yesterday, I had half of a network. I could access the Win XP machine from the Win 7 machine no problem; I couldn't do it the reverse way, but no big deal... I don't generally need to access that stuff.

However, I turned on the ability for other devices to access the internet through my computer; specifically to set up the xbox to allow netflix to stream through my laptop.

That apparently screwed EVERYTHING up.

Workgroup settings are identical; no passwords. Everything that can beturned on (no passwords, file sharing, network discovery) has been turned on.

Neither computer is recognizing the other. I HAVE to be able to transfer files from my laptop to the desktop; I don't have a dvd drive on the desktop, and the laptop does, and the video editing software I need is on the desktop.

Please, this shouldn't be this hard. I'm about read to pitch this stupid computer OUT of the window.

Edit: Just attempted to ping both computers... no problem at all. Both were able to ping each other. So the connection exists... the stupid OS just isn't recognizing it.