I don’t have XP home. I have one machine with XP pro corporate that I don’t turn on very often (only use it for games and MS flight simulator), two computers running PCLinuxOS (my current favorite distro), and two wireless laptops running linux (Asus EEEpc’s), all connected to my home network. Also have a NAS disk for backups and archive. I’m pretty sure they can all talk to each other (I grabbed some files off the windows computer from one of the linux computers last night), and they all for sure have no problem with the NAS. I’ll have to take a closer look tonight, but I don’t think there’s any problem, and I certainly didn’t have to do any extra configuration.
If you were able to access the Windows PC (XP Pro) from the Linux PC, then you should be alright. But for me, it may be a different issue mine being XP Home.
I’m not going to convert the machine in the basement from Windows 2000 to Linux because I use it for copying music from tapes and a turntable. I’ve tried that with Ubuntu and Audacity (the music editor I use) doesn’t work under the circumstances (It doesn’t recognize the signal).
A buddy has some old PC’s he’s trying to unload so I’ll check with him. But first I want to check into hardware requirements for PCLinuxOS; especially RAM requirements. His PC’s may not fit the bill.