Question : XP Home File Sharing Continual Failures

I've set the full security settings to allow everyone access to a shared filespace on an XP Home machine (using Admin login) and it works fine...for awhile.  However a few minutes later select files start to be "unavailable" for remote access.  This happens to both exe files, mdb databases, excel files, etc.  I'll be able to open a file remotely, then minutes later suddenly it's "unavailable" becuase it can't be found (or might be locked or encrypted).  This is such insanely poor network coding.  Is there any solution here?  

As I said, I logged in as Administrator and was able to access the full security settings, and all modifications look to be correctly set.  It will work fine, and with no explanation files will become "unavailable" to remote users - no changes, no one logs out or back in, etc.

If XP Home is such a complete load of crap in networking, then would an upgrade to XP Pro solve the problems once and for all?

Answer : XP Home File Sharing Continual Failures

Firstly i will start by saying that XP Home will not connect to domains, so if you want to run a domain then forget XP Home, an upgrade to XP Pro would be highly reccomended here.

If you are not running a domain, then i would be running a ping test on the connections to check for packet loss. If any of the ping times out then you are getting packet loss, this can cause problems communication accross the network.

If that tests out ok then next step would be to check that the networking software is ok, to do this the best bet is to reinstall the components. This can be done in add/remove programs under windows setup.

If you are getting packet loss, then you need to check your:
Cableing
NIC (network cards)
any adaptors or connectors
network software

In that order.

Hope this helps.