All computers can access NAS, NAS can't access anything.

Sorry, sphardy, I was foolishly trying to post a single reply to two people both trying to help - it was mdgm who suggested a potential encryption-level problem in Windows, and the regedit workaround. As for the slashes, my understanding is that Windows backslashes basically have to be translated into UNIX forward-slashes, while initial backslashes are not needed for hostname or path (which doesn't have to be a complete path from the root directory, but only a path from a share - though I couldn't find any of this in the online manual or program help; also the root directory has to be followed by a dollar-sign in the path if that's the share to be backed up, and spaces in Windows paths have to be escaped with a backslash). Nor have I discovered whether it's necessary to enter logon information for machines which aren't password-protected, so I guess I better stick to my new logon password and enter that along with my user-name (I guess there's also an administrator account hiding behind the Win XP login, perhaps I should try using that. It's not password-protected by default, so perhaps I'd need to make a password so the ReadyNAS can log in (again, can't find any discussion of this anywhere).

I still don't know if this could be a hardware or software malfunction. I'll try loading Frontview onto my wife's Mac and see if I can get anywhere by that route, and assuming I don't get anywhere, I'll raise a support ticket.

In the meantime, many thanks for your - and mdgm's - suggestions.

(As for Customer Feedback, there seems to be enough along the lines of what I posted about my surprise at the poor documentation already out there, and, given the time I've already spent permuting all the variables I can think of, I guess I should concentrate on other things than longterm improvement of the newbie NAS experience).