Problem solved.
6 of 36 the PC stations in our office were upgraded to W7. At first all of the stations could read each others shared folders. Then periodically all of the XP stations could not be read a particular W7 station. It happened randomly with no reason.
The answer lies in the "Network and Sharing Center". Under the "Advanced sharing settings" you will find three profiles, "Home or Work", "Public" and "Domain". We are a domain. The settings for "Network discovery" and File and printer sharing" must be set to on, while "Public folder sharing" is off. For the other two profiles "Network discovery" and "Public folder sharing" must be off. The "Network discovery" should not matter, but in my findings it does. If either of those settings were on, network access ceased. So, either they were set that way from the beginning (I have no way of knowing) and it took some time for the connection to cease, or it just randomally changed on it own. Regardless, once I corrected the settings, the W7 PCs were again able to share with the XP PCs.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions!
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