Can you NETWORK XP HOME and Professional when I do this the home computer will talk to the professional but on the home cant find the printer connected to the professional computer. Any thoughts please.1. Yes, you can network Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional in a Local Area Network (LAN).

2. Lacking a master "Computer Browser" you should be able to access the resources (LIKE a printer) of another LAN computer by:

Using Start-Run

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In Open, type \\ComputerName\SharedPrinterName, and then press ENTER.

For example, to connect to the shared printer named COLOR on the computer named HOMESRV, you would type \\HOMESRV\COLOR. You can use upper or lowercase letters for the computer and printer share names.

If you don't remember the name of the share, you can do the FOLLOWING:
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In Open, type \\ComputerName and then press ENTER.


3. LAN Setup References. The following are excellent references for setting up file and/or printer sharing on a LAN.

An easy read (written for mere mortals); I would start with these downloadable Microsoft documents. They are probably all you'll need. There's a lot of overlap between them; so if you're impatient, start with the "Troubleshooting" one:
File and Printer Sharing with Microsoft Windows
Troubleshooting File and Printer Sharing in Microsoft Windows XP

A rather complete (but more complex) web based writeup is:
Home Network, Wireless Network and Computer Networking Made Easy

And then there's a set of web based entries by Microsoft that looks pretty good. It's broken into eight separate pages so you can zero in on the area you're interested in. Following is link to first page:
How to set up a small network with Windows XP Home Edition (PART 1)


4. Computer Browser Service. If you're looking in "My Network Places", people frequently complain about not seeing the "other" computers and their resources. This has to do with the "Computer Browser" service. At least one of the computers on the LAN (the one that's powered "on" most of the time), should have the "Computer Browser" service running. It will build and maintain a "master" list of the other computers in your workgroup, so when they go to look at "My Network Places" this list can be sent to them without having to build one from scratch for each request. Yeah... I know... that makes almost no sense to you. Look at the following downloadable Microsoft documents:
Computer Browsing for SOHO Networks with Microsoft Windows
Troubleshooting Computer Browsing on SOHO Networks with Microsoft Windows