How to I connect to XP shares via the internet from Vista?

I have an XP Pro machine at home where I have shared out some folders. I'd like to connect to those shares over the Internet from my Vista Laptop while I'm at the office.

How can I do that?

Forget the cumbersome VPN setup. Get hamachi and install on both PC's. No fiddling with port forwarding or IPSec/L2TP VPN passthrough.

http://www.hamachi.cc/download/list.php

Then create a new network (on the host or client), then on the other computer, join that network. Once connected, right click the other computer and click browse. (make sure you have SMB shares enabled). Hamachi is also available for OS X and Linux computers with x86 CPU architecture.

Connect to your home VPN and then access the shares as normal.

The complex part is the "at the office from home" part. To do this as described, you will need quite an elaborate setup. You will need a high speed Internet connection at home that doesnt block port 1723. You will need a static IP address, a router with port forwarding and a good amount of network knowledge to set up a VPN. Then what you have is a very slow network connection to some shares and a big huge security hole. Probably not a good way to go.

My suggestion would be rather than shares accross the Internet would be to use a service such as Logmein or Gotomypc. The versions you would need to do what you want are not free but they are reasonable. They are user friendly and dont require all the headaches to configure. This way you can transfer files back and forth bidirectionally in a secure easy environment

Could use microsoft remote desktop, or you could use a free vpn program such as Tight VNC or Ultra VNC. Takes a bit of setting up to forward requests through your router/s if you are using any. But it works pretty good at controling a remote machine..You could also set up an FTP server on your XP machine and use a username/password to access your remote files. If you do that however, you open yourself to people trying to hack into your server, so be careful.