1 Ipod library, 2 PC's?

you need to have itunes installed on both PCs, and select the "share libraries" option under preferences on both PCs. Denote the drive\folder where the music is, and you should be all set. I keep mine titled "itunesmusic" so I will know when I search for it in explorer. Cheers,
Spencer

What type of OS are you using? Is the external drive shared
on the network? Does your laptop B have permission to access
the music library? Does your ITunes on laptop B map to the
same folder as laptop A? If the drive is shared with the
network, it shouldn't matter whether you have the player on
the main PC or not.

Sharing is selected on both laptops which both each has itunes on it. Both laptops are "pointed to" the external drive...it works fine for laptop A, no dice for laptop B.
I am running Windows XP on both machines, the external is set up as a network drive, laptop B is pointed to the external drive in itunes and it does have access to that drive, and still laptop B cannot see any of the music on the external drive.

Have you tried an alternate player? Such as Foobar, Windows
Media or J.River to see if the same problem occurs? You say
it has access to the drive, but does it have it to the
folder itself? Can you open the music folder from Laptop B
and
manually select songs to play?

Do you need to import the library to Laptop B?

iTunes maintains a couple of files on your laptop that tell it where to find anything you have added to the library. Problem is you haven't added your external drive yet.

Laptop B iTunes does not see the files on the external because you have not told it they exist. It doesn't matter that you pointed B to the drive in advanced preferences, that only tells iTunes where to put any files you rip in the future, it does not tell iTunes to add anything already on that drive to the library. You can either go to the menus and add to the library or drag the external music folder into iTunes and drop it. iTunes will then add the song titles you selected to it's library files along with the path to get there and it will know where they are.

Sharing will only work if the 2 laptops are networked together. If they are then the iTunes library from A will show up in B's library as shared. This isn't really what you want since A will always have to be on and the external drive hooked to A. That means B will be pulling the files through A and the network rather than directly from the drive.

Did you get this to work now? Reubent is correct that you need to make sure that laptop B needs to have the library added so that it will recognize the library rather than just teling the laptop where music files will go from that point on.

Kmulkey, see my response on this thread which is identical to what you want to accomplish. Hope this helps.