Infrared settings

I previously had infrared working and was able to send pictures from my camera phone to my inspiron 600m.  I made some changes to my laptop at the recommendations of a friend (to make it more secure) and now I cannot connect with my phone.  One of the changes was to go under "my network places properties" and uninstall "client for microsoft networks and file and printer sharing for microsoft networks."  Could this be causing the problem or could it be some other change I made?  In other words, is it necessary to have "client for microsoft networks and file and printer sharing for microsoft networks" installed inorder to connect through infrared with my phone or could it be some other settings that I changed?  Thank you in advance.