i have two puters (XP PRO on both) on my home LAN attached via an onboard gigabite controller and one with an added gigabite net card and a bypass (or whatever theyre called) cable with no hub, its always worked fine, but i recently swapped hdd's around (including from a third machine) so i could use both my SATA drives in one machine and my other drives in the other and i started getting this error on one...then after messing with the settings trying to fix it, getting it on both computers....

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o264/jayt85331/ss-1.gif

thing is, the ICS works, i can ping them both back and forth by name and ip address, they all show up in network neighborhood and "view workgroup computers" on both boxes...the only thing i cant do is "see" and access each ones shared folders and files. ive tried uninstalling the net cards and deleting connections, unsharing drives and folders and starting from scratch, tried different settings, changing workgroup names, puter names, tried with static ip addy's and without..im not really up on DNS, WINS and gateway settings, but, i never had to be before.
the only thing i can see (that may be at fault) that i havent altered is,... i noticed in services that my NETLOGON (and 1 or 2 others, such as netmeeting remote desktop sharing) isnt starting and i cant start it, or actually those two start briefly and shut down immediatley with the "netmeet service on local puter started and stopped...some services stop automatically if they have no work to do" and a couple cant start with an error3 "the system cannot find the path specified"...i recently had some viruses infest both puters and i assume a couple of these entries are from the deletion of malicious files....for example one of them is "hardware clock driver" which i know is left over from virus cleansing...im 99.9 sure "netlogon" is microsoft, (though, i know, they can be pretty good at disguising the malicious files) but, i thought i read somewhere that it (netlogon) is only required if a domain or domain name is used with your network, i also just very recently noticed the puters are only connected at 100 mpbs (but, i think thats from the last total uninstall of cards, i may have installed the wrong driver in one, i havent checked it out at all, but, it would be inconsequential, i would think).....thank you in advance for any help or suggestions rendered

Make sure that the user name and passwords are the same on both PC's. make sure that the Windows firewall is not running.

is this fixed?

Most all of the time that's a firewall issue, especially with Norton.

I'd guess maybe simple file sharing is on on one or both machines. I believe simple file sharing always uses the guest account when accessiing shares. The guest account settings may be corrupt, causing a problem.

In order authenticate using a specific account such, as the one you are logged on with, simple file sharing needs to be turned off.

Then, assuming you are using the NTFS file system, set your share permissions and sceurity to allow the user on the other machine the required access.

no, unfotunately, its not fixed, and i know ms file sharing is turned "on", on both machines, i'll try turning one and then the other, then both off, (should they both be off?) i know in win 98 they both had to have it on and there was a place to designate server and/or client, ive not noticed this provision in xp, is it done automatically?...or did i miss it? ive assumed the computer/adapter with the direct net connection is automatically designated as the server or host and the other as client, is this true?

how would i repair a corrupt guest account setting?

and, no its fat 32 because i had to access the drive through win 98, install 98 and then upgrade to xp. ive been thinking of converting them though, maybe nows the time?

it might be important to note that i was getting a new error messege on the host (or, what i consider the host, see above) computer that had the same first paragraph as the original error messege but was followed by "A specified authentication package is unknown"....but they are both back to the original messege now...thanks again for your help guys, if nothing else it gives me an avenue to check further

after shutting off printer and file sharing on either of them...i cant see either of them on either computers "network neighbor hood" and ics doesnt work...so, that cant be right can it?...as to the firewall thing, when i had those viruses i installed panda virus prog which also came with a firewall, even though i disabled them i see theyre still starting and i cant shut them off from services.msc...i think i'll uninstall them a try again

NTFS gives you more control over your shares and should also improve performance. Here's (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_filesharing/01disablesimplesharing.htm) a read on how to disable simple file sharing so you can authenticate as a user other than guest.