Damn you Computers

Because we've been acquiring laptops over desktop computers we've just bought a single wireless router which I configured with ease. So we've wireless Vista laptops and one XP desktop that acts as the printer server.

Do you think any of the laptops could print? Of course not. Nothing had changed IP-wise, but none of the Vista laptops could login to the XP computer. Other way around - oh no problem XP was happy to login to Vista shares.

Much fiddling with settings, much browsing of the web, much tearing of hair - when suddenly the printer burps and pumps out the document that had showed up the problem. The only thing I can think of is that the router had done a big refresh and suddenly 'found' the XP machine. I'd love to take credit, but it just happened.