Accessing Vista Home shared folders from XP Home machine requires password

After reinstalling Vista on the "upstairs" machine and rebuilding our home network (cable through router) the Vista machine can access files on the XP machine . . . but not the reverse. Although I can see the two Vista drives OK I'm prompted for a usernameassword, a curiosity since only one passwordless user exists in our Vista setup. (Entering that username and leaving the password blank still gave a "this drive is not accessible" error.)

I can follow the instructions on this page (File and Printer Sharing in Windows Vista) partway through, but when I get to the window shown in Figure 6 the "Share" button is grayed out. I did go into "Advanced Sharing" and put a check in the "Share this folder" check box, but that didn't eliminate the password requirement.

Thanks for any help -

Hello, try making another Admin account and see if that will work .

The Vista machine already had two admins, so I added a third, rebooted, added a password to the new user account, and after all this still no luck sharing the drives from the XP machine. (The "share" button is still grayed out.) There was one change, in that the XP computer gives me a "not accessible" error instead of asking for a password . . . looks like I may be in the land of permissions problems.

Oh, and my apologies for the inadvertent smiley in the original post. I previewed it but must have slept through reading it . . .

I thought the XP was having issues .>>>>>>the Vista machine can access files on the XP machine . . . but not the reverse. Although I can see the two Vista drives OK I'm prompted for a usernameassword, <<<< from your first post , So, my thinking was that you would try making a new Admin account on the XP machine.