A Simple VPN Question

At work we have a local network with 15 or so PCs and a couple of network printers connected to a 24 port switch, thence connected to the outside world via a SonicWall firewall. Since the SonicWall includes several VPN licenses, and I often travel, I thought it would be a snap to construct a protected tunnel from my Win7 laptop to the SonicWall, effectively connecting me to the edge of the network and able to browse and use any of the local network resources.

I had our IT guy set it up for me for my last trip out of town, and I fired it up from my hotel room. All I could see in Windows Explorer was a single Shared folder - nothing else was visible. I checked with the IT guru today and he told me that I cold connect to anything I want to, so long as I know the IP address or network name, but that it's impossible to set up the VPN to support browsing and a Network Neighborhood-style view on the remote computer.

I don't think I believe that, but since I haven't worked on PCs and networks for a living in about 10 years, I haven't kept up with what MS has been doping to make life less convenient lately. Can someone familiar with using and configuring VPN connections confirm or deny that what I want to do is possible? Better yet, can someone tell me how to set it up? If it matters, we have wervers on the network, but we aren't configured as a domain and don't use Active Directory.

Thanks, as always!

Tags: Networking