Question : Networking a work laptop with a home network

I have a laptop issued to me by one of my clients; it is a Lenove Thinkpad running Win XP (32 bit), which interfaces to my client's infrastructure through a VPN and uses Domain-based networking.

Up until recently, getting it to see my home network was a simple process of adding Networking Places through the networking wizard.

My primary home machine, however, blew up. I rebuilt it and upgraded the OS from Vista 32 bit to Win 7 64 bit.

Now all bets are off. I can't see anything on my home network from the shared drive on my Win 7 machine to the 1TB network storage drive that's connected to m y wireless router through an Ethernet cable (and was initially configured using my Win 7 Machine).

Am I hosed?

Is there any way to get my XP machine to see this home network?

Will I totally screw my client-provided machine if I switch back and forth between Workgroup networking and Domain networking (is that even possible?)

Answer : Networking a work laptop with a home network

no you cannot hotswap domain membership... but there's no technical reason we can't get the machines seeing each other while not on the vpn...

lets start with the basics...

what's the computer name of your home win7 box?  lets call it win7 for now
what's the computer name of the xp work laptop?  lets call it xpbox for now
what is the inside ip address of the win7 box?  lets call it 192.168.1.10 for now
what is the inside ip address of the xp work laptop?  lets call it 192.168.1.20 for now
what is the make/model of the network attached hard drive, and ip address?

now, from the xpbox:  
start > run > cmd
ping win7
(insert win7 computer name there)
(what happens, do you see an ip address?  does it match what you expect it to be?  does it reply or say unknown host or time out?)
ping 192.168.1.10
(insert ip of win7 box there)  does it reply or not
start > run > \\win7
(insert name of win7 box) what happens?

from the win7 box:
start > run > cmd
ping xpbox
ping 192.168.1.20
start > run > \\xpbox
(substitute where necessary, report what happens from each test)