Home Network - Windows 7 Desktop & Ubuntu On Laptop

I just can't connect them to save my life. I have read near to 30 different threads I tried absolutely everything the [very helpful] people have posted, most from this forum.

Here is my strange issue:

I can connect to my windows shared folders using my ubuntu laptop by using the direct ip and smb://

But I cannot access my ubuntu laptop from my win7 machine. I can see the laptop in my network places in windows but it just times out and won't connect.

Any advice?

..oh and one extremely strange issue (to me at least). I have setup a virtual machine on my win7 machine and I'm using ubuntu. within that vm (virtualbox) I can access my ubuntu laptop!! The connection is 'bridged' with my windows machine!

I can also access ubuntu on the vm from windows, and vice versa. The *ONLY* connection I cannot establish is from my win7 machine to my ubuntu laptop.

I have no idea..hopefully somebody can shed some light.

Appreciate ANY advice.