[BrianR]

OK. The external drive issue is moot; I now can talk over my LAN.

However, I am still disturbed that something doesn't work right. I'll play with it on my spare time until the drive works. OCD, thy name is BrianR!

The network problem turned out to be some weird configuration thing with Windows XP. Even my guru was stumped until he went into the router and saw a bunch of users that he couldn't identify. That got me running around collecting IPs from all me devices. Come time to check my laptop, I turn it on and lo and behold, the network can see and interact with it perfectly!

So he goes into it's particular network configuration and copies it all over to the desktop manually and presto! It now works properly! So that's that.

While we were at it, as fixed it so that I can see and talk to every computer in the house. Just in case. Now, when I add a file server, backups will be a breeze!

Thanks for all the help though. I will keep asking questions as I hit them. You guys are great!