Windows 7 Win 7 computer see/don't see win xp computers randomly

Hi all,

I run Win 7 64 bit on an i7 950 processor based machine with 6 GB RAM.
There are 3 more computers at my home which operate under win xp pro operating system.

When I open windows explorer on the win 7 computer I sometimes see the other computers (under network) and sometimes I don't. It changes randomly - I see them now, take a coffee break, when I come back I don't see them.

Really annoying when you depend on data which resides in one of the other computers (can't copy everything to the new one ).

Any help on the matter?
Utzly

Yea WINXP is naff for sharing to newer OS's, personally i'd update all the other PCs in the home (like I did) to Win7 since its much better for networking...but thats just my view...or maybe look at "Hamachi" as a bypass to the issue since that is easy to setup a crossplatform VPN connection without the usual hassles of other VPN solutions.

Some sort of a solution

Things got even funnier: the fact that I don't see any icons for the other computers, under 'network', doesn't mean that the win 7 computer can't reach them! I added the other computer's addresses to the favorites and whenever they disappear from explorer I can reach them via the favorite connection.
Strange!

Utzly