Networking two machines Win7 and Win XP
 

Hail all,

Please help me with struggling to put two machines in network through ethernet.

1. I've got an AMD-8Core-4GHz-8GBRAM machine with Windows 7 64bit and
an old INTEL DualCore-2GHz-2GBRAM laptop machine with Windows XP Pro 32bit.
2. I've connected them through ethernet cards and through a Ethernet switch
with two bi-directional ethernet cables. The switch shows high indications for both.
3. I've made the computer names to be the same.
4. After all, I can only see the files of the Win7 machine in the WinXP laptop
and these ONLY as "read only" files, so I can't work on them.
But I see nothing of the WinXP laptop in the Win7 machine.
5. When unpluging-repluging the ethernet cables the laptop says:
"unable to assign IP address to the compuer". Windows can't fix it.

I need to work with the two machines in both directions.
Could anyone throw some light in the labyrinth?

(If I try to connect both computers through Wi-Fi, it doesn't work as well.
I possibly don't have the correct settings there. But I prefer ethernet.)

Thanks in advance!