The two computers (one running Windows 7, and another running Windows XP) in my house are connected to the internet through a broadband router. I understand that because the computers are on the same network I can share files between the two machines. As a workaround I have been emailing files to myself from one computer, and then downloading the email message on the other computer, but this seems like a cumbersome way and I am thinking that there must be an easier method.

You are correct that there is an easier method which involves setting up file sharing between the two computers. This will allow you to access the hard drive of one computer from the other, essentially treating that other computer as an external drive (or network drive, to be precise). When this is setup and working it makes life quite a bit easier, but the setup can be quite a process. Having two Windows XP computers talk to each other is relatively easy, as is having two Windows 7 computers talk, but setting up communication between a Windows XP and Windows 7 machine is more difficult. Even though Microsoft have attempted to make sharing files on a home network easy by introducing new sharing options in Windows 7, it has actually made the process a bit more complicated and difficult to understand, primarily because Windows 7 introduced several new sharing features which are not backwards compatible with Windows XP (but are only compatible with other computers running Windows 7). Nevertheless, we will work through the various steps and try to establish this setup for the two computers.

We will begin by making some configuration changes on your Windows XP computer. First, it is necessary to enable sharing on the computer so that we can share files (and potentially printers). To do this, find a folder on your computer that you wish to share (and is not a system folder, as by default Windows will not allow you to share folders which are used by the system for security reasons). Right-click on that folder and select “Properties”. In the properties window that appears for that folder, select the “Sharing” tab. Under the “Network sharing and security” heading you will probably notice that it says remote access has been disabled for your computer because you have not run the Network Setup Wizard. Click the “Network Setup Wizard” text to start the setup wizard so that we can enable remote access for your computer. Follow through the wizard and when prompted select “This computer connects to the Internet through a residential gateway…” (as your computer is connecting to the internet through a router, which is the residential gateway to the internet). On the next screen you will be prompted for the computer name and description – leave these as is since they don’t need to be changed. Next, you will be asked for the workgroup name. Note down the name of the workgroup as we will need to configure the same name on your Windows 7 computer. Finally, select “Turn on file and printer sharing” so that we can commence sharing these items on your computer. At the conclusion of the wizard you will be prompted to create a Network Setup Disk. This is designed to automatically configure other computers running Windows XP to access the network. Since we will be configuring a Windows 7 computer this step is not necessary and can be skipped.

Once the wizard has completed you will notice that many more options are available on the “Sharing” tab of the folder properties we previously opened. In particular, we can now tick the “Share this folder on the network” box and provide a “Share name” which is how we will recognise that folder on the network. Tick the box and then provide your folder with a share name – I suggest that this is the same as the name of the folder, so that you don’t become confused by using two different names. That said, I also recommend that the share name does not contain any spaces (as that can cause some problems later). If you would like to be able to modify the contents of this folder from the remote computer then also tick “Allow network users to change my files”. Click “Apply” to save the changes and finally click OK to close the properties window.

Now that we have setup a folder to be shared, before finishing on the Windows XP computer we should double-check that the Windows Firewall has been configured to allow file sharing. Go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open the “Windows Firewall” control panel (you may need to first open the “Network and Internet Connections” control panel category). In the Windows Firewall window, select the “Exceptions” tab and check that “File and Print Sharing” is listed and ticked. This grants File and Print sharing an exception to the firewall, allowing other remote computers on your network to connect to this machine for the purpose of sharing files and printers. Once all has been confirmed click the OK button to close the window.

We will now turn our attention to the Windows 7 computer. First, we need to check that the Windows 7 computer has been configured with the same workgroup as the Windows XP machine. Go to the “Start” menu then right-click on “Computer” and select “Properties”. The System control panel should appear. In the left-hand pane click “Advanced system settings” which will open the System Properties window. Select the “Computer Name” tab and verify that the workgroup is the same as the Windows XP computer. You should have written down the workgroup of your Windows XP computer during the previous procedure, although if you have forgotten then on the Windows XP computer go to the “Start” menu then right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”. In the System Properties window select “Computer Name” which will show the workgroup information. If you need to change the workgroup on either machine just click the “Change…” button which will allow you to modify the workgroup.

Once you have confirmed that the workgroup settings are the same we can proceed to enable file and print sharing on the Windows 7 computer. Go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel”, open the “Network and Internet” control panel and then click “Network and Sharing Center”. In the left-hand pane select “Change advanced sharing settings” which provides you with all the various settings for file sharing. Turn on network discovery, file and print sharing, and public folder sharing. At the bottom of the settings you will see an option about enabling password protected sharing, so that users who wish to access your folders require a password. Disable this for the moment, until we have successfully got sharing working, as this will give us one less thing to worry about should you need to troubleshoot why sharing is not working. Once you have finished all the configuration click “Save changes”.

Finally, you need to configure which folders you wish to share on the Windows 7 computer. Similar to Windows XP, locate the folder that you wish to share then right-click on that folder and select “Properties”. In the properties window that appears select the “Sharing” tab and then click the “Share…” button to setup the sharing. In the File Sharing window that appears you can either select a specific user(s) to grant permission to access that folder, or click the down arrow on the drop-down box and select “Everyone” to grant everyone on your network access to that folder.

Once you have configured the folder(s) to be shared, everything should now be in place to access the shared folders from each computer. The easiest way to access the folders is through “Network” on Windows 7 or “My Network Places” in Windows XP. These are visible in the left-hand pane of Windows 7 and Windows XP (respectively) when you open Windows Explorer. You should see the name of your other computer listed, and you can then drill-down further to see the specific folders which have been shared on that computer. Alternatively, if you would like a shortcut way to access the other computer then go to the “Run” box (shortcut key CTRL + R) and type the following:
\\remote-computer-name\shared-folder-name. Obviously, in this situation replace “remote-computer-name” with the name of the remote computer (which you can find in the same location as the workgroup setting) and replace “shared-folder-name” with the name of the shared folder which you are attempting to access (remember, depending on how you have configured the shared folder the shared name (which you need to use here) might be different to the actual name of the folder (this is why I recommended that you keep both the same, to avoid confusion).

Once you have successfully got sharing working I strongly suggest that you now go back and enable password protection on your Windows 7 shares. In this situation, you will now need to type a username and password of your account on the Windows 7 computer when you attempt to access shared folders from the Windows XP computer. While this can be a bit inconvenient, it does provide increased security.

While setting-up shared folders between computers is handy for transferring files, it isn’t that good for keeping the files between two computers in sync (for example, if you wish to keep a duplicate copy of your documents on both computers). Any synchronisation which relies on a manual process isn’t that great, since this is prone to error and you could find things get substantially out of sync if you don’t do the process on a regular basis. In this situation there are quite a few utilities which you can purchase that synchronise files and can also do this across a network connection. Alternatively, if you would like to keep computers in sync, even when they are not connected to the same network, then another alternative is to investigate cloud-based file storage such as Dropbox. The clever thing about Dropbox is files will keep in sync via the internet if your computers are not on the same network, but if they are on the same network it can go into LAN Sync mode which will instead sync files across the much higher speed local network rather than across the internet.