It allows you to stream media, control what data is shared, and can also be password protected. It’s as simple as creating a Homegroup on on machine then joining the other to it. If you have one or more Windows 7 machine, sharing files and devices becomes extremely easy with the Homegroup feature.

Share Files and Folders Between Vista and XP Machines But once again, we have a complete tutorial for that situation. Basically you need to add a user and set up sharing on the XP machine. On the other hand, sharing with password protection becomes a bit more difficult. The sharing process is pretty straight-forward if you’re not using password protection…as you just need to drop what you want to share into the Vista Public folder. When Windows Vista came out, hardware requirements were intensive, drivers weren’t ready, and sharing between them was complicated due to the new Vista structure.

How to Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista Depending on what your printer is, sharing it should be easier as Vista and Windows 7 do a much better job of automatically locating the drivers. The Homegroup feature isn’t compatible with Vista, so we need to go through a few different steps. The process is a bit easier than sharing between XP and Windows 7, but takes a bit of work. This will allow you to share the contents of an XP drive to your Windows 7 computer.Īnother scenario you might run into is having to share files and printers between a Vista and Windows 7 machine. The trickiest part is making sure you add the appropriate local user.

Although it might sound complicated, the process is not bad. If you don’t need to share a printer and only want to share a drive, then you can just map an XP drive to Windows 7. Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 & XPĪnother method of sharing data between XP and Windows 7 is mapping a network drive. The biggest problem you may run into is finding the correct printer drivers for both versions of Windows. Essentially you’ll want to make sure both machines are part of the same workgroup, set up the correct sharing settings, and making sure network discovery is enabled on Windows 7. The most common scenario you’re probably going to run into is sharing between Windows 7 and XP.

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