Okay. You guys are great. Clearly the collective wisdom is not to throw money at the problem - but figure the problem out. Owbist - in my thread on not connecting my husband's vista laptop to our network, I tried quietly, methodically to troubleshoot the issues - to no avail. I found lots of similar frustrations on google - but no solutions that worked - and I think I tried them all - at least to the best of my ability. thanks for those great, easy-to-follow instructions to transfer to an external hard drive. He'll want to do that anyway - even if he keeps this computer. This computer guy is pricey - but where I am in DC they seem to fall in the $125-140/hour range - and they can usually fix a problem. Others that charge $40-75 - that the uninformed think are good - but their know-how is less than what I find here. I tried a few of those locally recommended guys - and they accomplished the simple tasks but also made mistakes I had to hire the more expensive guy to fix. My main complaint with him is that he's wedded to his biases - he hates Vista - so his recommendation is usually to avoid or ditch it. Our struggles with Vista seem to often be how often we're blocked from things or performing simple tasks have all sort of obstacles - for "safety's" sake. Thanks to everyone for pointing out that Windows 7 is just a revamped Vista. I got my first issue of Smart Computing and they were tauting it and described some features I thought I'd love. DA - if W8 is in process, is there any indication of what it will be like? Probably worth waiting for - or at least waiting to hear more about how Windows 7 is panning out. So I'll keep plugging away on my other thread to get him connected. If I don't succeed by Tuesday, the computer guy will come and fix it. I guess we'll stop there. Thanks. Lynn.

I just went thru this exact (almost) procedure, getting my new Vista desktop to network with our Win xp computer with printer. Not so easy, but here are the instructions which work: 1. To set up the house network, on the Vista computer: Start-Control Panel-System and Maintaint.- system-computer name,domain,workgroup settings area on the screen, hit the "change settings" button, then system properties-computer name tab-change computer name/domain changes-in Workgroup type your home network's name-OK. Then to set up the printer, a huge pain, but doable: On the Vista computer: Start-Control Panel-add printer-add Local Printer (I know it's on a network, but this is the way to do it)-create a new port-default is "local port",leave it-next you have to enter a port name, this is the tricky part, you have to type in the path to the printer manually, the path should look like: \\your exact host computer name\your exact printer's sharing name. That's it. To check for the exact host computer name, go to the host computer, my computer, and a screen will come up with it's official name, use it, case sensitive. For printer name, go to host computer, printers area thru the control panel, rt. click the printer and properties. A sharing tab will show, click it, the exact name for the shared printer will show, again use it case sensitive. The above took me all day when I got my new Vista, hope it helps.

I would contact Lexmark customer support directly and ask if a 64-bit driver for Vista is available, or if there is an alternative that will work. Be prepared to provide them with the complete info for the version you have. Open a command prompt and type ver and press enter.

If you are using Outlook Express then look here to repair the problem