I just got a good contract job at another office. I have a big problem w/ a printer in that office. These guys work as independent contractors so every single on has their own laptop or a pc. Because all of these computers are Win XP home edition I have giving up on trying to convince the owner to set up a domain. At this point all I'm trying to do is keep the network secure from the outside and make them be able to print on the network. Since they don't even have enough jacks I was trying to set up the printer as a share on a spare computer. The problems I have:

1. Some of the computers are in a different 'workgroups'. Even thought I changed the workgroup to 'office' the system cannot see each other. Even though "some" see each other they cannot share their resources (i.e. printer) I am flat out refused access "You don't have permission to share the resources on this computer" I always thought that shares resources are password protected. Some computers let me input the password some refuse to share all together. Are there certain kind of "group policies" that I don't know about build into XP Home. I have disabled the firewall on all of them.

2. Some systems can ping other systems on the network but not the other way around. WTF. I have disabled the firewall on all of them.