Cannot Turn on File Sharing

Hello,

Here's my problem. I will try to be as specific as possible. I've searched all over the Internet for a solution to this problem. Nothing has worked, though some have claimed that their solution is full-proof, guaranteed to succeed.

I have to machines, one running XP Professional and the other, Vista Home Premium.

I have the machines networked. My Vista machine sees my XP machine very easily (or as it should), but the reverse is not true. No matter what I do, my XP machine cannot see my Vista machine. I can ping each machine from the other.

I figured that the problem here was on the Vista machine. Thus I immediately checked to see if I had file sharing enabled.

Opening up Network and Sharing, I attempt to turn on Network Discovery and then File Sharing. This is what I see:





I'm not actually sure why it says "custom" under Network Discovery and File sharing, but I move on.

After turning on ND, which still reads "custom", I go to file sharing:





After enabling what I think ought to be enabled and hitting the "apply" button, I get this error:





I've seen others that have gotten this error, some under similar situations, others under different.

My hunch is that some service in Vista is not running, which is causing this RPC error.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Alan

Hello (again):

Strange to say, after working on this for days and after posting the above message, I started a few services (specifically, "Server", which needed Security Accounts Manager) and was able to enable file sharing without the RPC error.

Now my XP Machine is able to see my Vista Machine.

Alan