OK - so I finally decided to connect a laptop to my FSX rig to offload a few 3rd party programs. I have been stuck in network **** ever since. I AM pc savvy and network savvy, and I've gone through ALL available suggestions on getting networked properly. However...no matter WHAT I try, my client PC keeps giving me errors on accessing and security rights to my server pc. I mean firewalls are good, been through all the steps on file sharing and permissions...still I get errors from my client PC that my "server pc" is not accessible and can't be written to. Any ideas? Anyone else go through this? How did you solve it? I am about to throw my laptop away and just go back to flying fsx without any 3rd party programs...

First thing.. for configuring you network turn off all firewalls and such.. they can only mask your problems.. after you get the network ocnfigured you can turn them back on and you will know what settings you need for your network to work the way you want it.After you turn all that stuff off.. start with the basics..Open a command prompt ( DOS stype prompt ) I assume your running XP.. go to start run type 'cmd' to open a command shell window.In that window type ipconfig to get your IP address. ( do this on both PC's on your network )Ping each PC by IP address from the cmd prompt on each PC.If you can ping the IP addresses, try pinging the names..I don't know how much you know, but for workgroup PC's they must both be members of the same workgroup. You are best to have the same account name and password on each PC as well.Usually these kinds of things are security related either due to firewall or anitspyware and such.

Well it looks like I have everything working now...turns out your idea about antispyware reminded me that I had recently "immunized" my pc with SB Search & Destroy...so I undid that and then I disabled Simple File Sharing and ensured that the EVERONE user group had Full Control as well as Read and Write. Not sure which actually did it but all is well so thanks for the idea...MUCH appreciated!