File sharing between windows 2000 and XP

1) I believe that Windows XP is not setup for that by default,
you may need to install the old BETBUI service.

2) Also, if the 2000 machine has a login password installed,
it will NOT allow any other machine to browse it, without
logging in.

3) Password-less file sharing over NETBUI was available
on the consumer side of windows:

Windows 3.11 for Work groups
Windows 95, 98 and Millenium.

The professional versions of windows, built on NT
technology require a login:

Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP,
and now Vista.

4) The best work around is to login to the 2000 machine when
it prompts you for a password, using your regular USER ID
and PASSWORD.

If the 2000 machine is not setup with a secure login,
just create a new account, ranking power user or higher.

5) Note that you only need to login over the network ONCE,
because windows XP can REMEMBER your password,
and login automatically the next time.

6) Make sure that the firewall (or A firewall) is not
blocking access to either machine, just disable the
firewalls for testing.

Similarly, if your LAN is behind a residential router, using
the router as a smart hub or switch, make sure that
the routers MAC address access blocking is disabled,
until you get everything setup and tested.

7) Finally if a PC is not visible in a work group, this does not
mean that it is not accessible. This is a Windows quirk.

You can try to access another computer by using the
default/administrative shares. These shares cannot be
disabled in XP, at least they will not stay disabled, as
they will restart during every reboot, whether you like it
or not.

This means that you can ALWAYS access all the drives
on another machine, whether you share them or not, unless
you take extreme measures in the local policies.

To access drive "E:" on a computer called "Henry" on a
machine in the same work-group,

open up windows explorer, and tyr the following into the
address line:

\\Henry\E$

This should access drive E:, after some delay, and possibly
a login prompt, even though drive is is NOT marked as
shared.

Down you just love windows ?!
Security by obscurity ?!
Microsoft is getting very good at hanging massive steel doors
on paper walls.

Hope this solves your problem, or gets around it.
Please rate my answers,

Martin