I have two questions about Vista and I'd like to apologize in advance if they've already been asked an answered. I did several searches and couldn't find an answer. Maybe my search skills are not so great. Anyway, I've been using Windows XP on several computers, but recently bought a new laptop that came with Vista pre-installed.

My first problem is trying to map network drives that are on the Vista laptop. I've never had any problems doing this between XP computers. I would just use something like \\MyComputer1\D$ and enter my login name and password, but this doesn't work with drives which are on the Vista laptop. I enabled file sharing and I can see the exception rule set in the firewall settings. I can also ping the Vista machine and see that the computer name is correct. Is there something else I need to enable or configure in order to access the drives on the Vista laptop (via Map Network Drive) across my network?

My second question is about migrating my Outlook Express information and settings from Windows XP to Vista. Is this even possible? I want to give away my old laptop and there are several hundred emails in my Outlook Express that I don't want to lose. Any help with either question would be greatly appreciated.

I do not think there is a way to migrate your OE accounts and setting to Windows Mail, since your OE will be in your XP machine's registry and I doubt Vista will be able to tap into your XP registry.

If you do not want to lose your messages, just open OE, select all the messages and drag them to a folder. They will appear as individual files called .eml. Double click on this and it will open in OE. I'm unsure if in Vista .eml files will open. You may want to try it. You'll have to do this for all the custom folders you may have created in OE.

I do know for sure your contacts can be imported to Vista's Windows Mail. Just export your contacts from OE and import in Windows Mail.

You may want to try the new Windows Mail Live (in beta right now). It will replace both Windows Mail in Vista and Outlook Express in XP.