Home Networking Problem.

I decided that I was going to set up a home network, so that I could share the printer between my parents computer, and my laptop.
After a while of fiddling around, I managed to be able to print stuff from my computer to the printer setup on my parents printer. I tried to to it the other way around, and no such luck. (we have two printers. One does colour, and doesn't)
I clicked "view work group computers" and my parents computer finds itself. My laptop freezes up. That's getting annoying. I'm pretty sure I have them both in the same work group. Why can't they find each other?

Oh, and I clicked Network ID under computer name, and now when the computer boots up, it asks for a password. I just click enter, and its fine. I still don't like that. So, my next question is how do I get rid of that?

I'm not the most computer savy guy, and I've gotten myself into somewhat of a pickle. Anybody think they can help me out?