Royboy said:
I am having a difficult time setting up a home network. I have 2
computers. One with XP Home, the other with 2000Pro. For some reason XP's
network setup is not so easy with 2000Pro. Can anyone provide me with a
step by step instruction on how to make it work? I am connected to a wired
router so there's no problem using the internet. Now I would like to file
share and use the printer which is connected directly to my computer with
XP Home.
For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below). For Win2k, allow File & Printer Sharing. You won't
run a Wizard on Win2k. The main thing is to have the matching user
accounts/passwords (see below) and configure your firewalls properly.
Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall; or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls
such as the built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3)
not having identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines;
4) trying to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.
For XP and Windows 2003 Server, MVP Hans-Georg Michna has an excellent small
network troubleshooter. It may also be useful with Vista.
http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm
Here are some general networking tips for home/small networks:
A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this
will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a
third-party firewall or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm
Protection" (like Norton 2006/07) which acts as a firewall, then you're
fine. With third-party firewalls, I usually configure the LAN allowance
with an IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you
would substitute your correct subnet. Do not run more than one firewall.
B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.
C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. If you wish a machine to boot
directly to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for
convenience, you can do this. The instructions at this link work for both
XP and Vista:
Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm
D. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users' home
directories (My Documents) or Program Files, but you can share folders
inside those directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared
Documents folder.
Malke
