OT: How Do You Set Up Home Networking

[Thermodyne]

It’s easy….

1) Put all systems in the same workgroup such as “oz”. Do not use “workgroup”, that is like leaving the front door open. Give each system a unique name, “scarecrow” “ecity” and such. I like short names; they are faster to type when accessing a resource.
2) Hard code the address onto the network adapters. Or let your internet router assign them. Gateway will be the address of the router; DNS will be a public DNS server.
3) Share the files/folders you want to have access too and give permissions to the Users that will have access. Trick: If you are the only user, use the same account and password on each system. Pay attention to permissions and protos on the ME system and be sure to turn on file and print sharing.
4) Do not bother trying to map and drill to shared resources. Enter the network locations when trying to access them. With no WIN’s or local DNS, it can sometime be hard to find resources without the exact location. Make use of mapped shares, it will save time.
5) Think about getting some network environment software. A copy of 2K server will do the trick if you have a spare system to run it on. Or use something like WinProxy to provide network services. If bucks are tight, then you can use FreeBSD. Be warned, it is a real un-user friendly piece of software. But once you get it set up, it will not give you any trouble.
6) Read the info in the Help file before you start, and remember that ME and XP have a few differences when sharing files and folders.

[Mylon]

The XP disk has a network setup wizard you can use to run on non-XP machines. This will copy XP-networking files and protocols onto these other computers so they will be more compatible.

However, I should let you know that I have never done such for my network and I have learned to get around it. Basically, if you don't do the above you'll have these problems:

2)Win98 will not be able to copy files from an XP machine in the root directory of the shared folder. Files in subfolders will copy fine. This isn't always the case...
WinXP sometimes doesn't like sharing with other XP machines. 1)I get access denied Messages trying to copy files from one machine to another. This applies to some shared folders (like custom folders), but not others (like Shared Documents).

I have had some fun in playing with my network. Like I would share a CDROM drive, put a CD in it, and then use the networked drive to install a program onto every computer in the network simultaneously. It takes longer, but once it's started I can walk away and do something else, as opposed to having to move the disc to another computer and start the installation process again.

[TurinTurambar]

I have this machine on ME, my laptop on XP Home, and my kid's PC on 98.

They all talk to each other just fine. Of course I did spend almost a whole day getting it to go! And if you asked me now, I could only tell you that I tried so many different things that I don't even know specifically what I did and why it works!

Which causes me to ask myself: "Why am I even posting here?"

I did take some screenshots of my net config screens. If you're still having problems I could email them to you this evening.

Turin

[Electrum]

If your running a software firewall, you will need to educate it.

[Atrocities]

Thanks guys. I was able to get it to work. Whether or not it continues to work will be the test.

I was able to use the ME machine to look and copy over video from the XP machine. I made a network set up disk and used it on the the ME machine and used a seperate name for the network other than the defualt one.

Thanks again for all your help guys.