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Wireless Network
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| DJ Mikey Mike |
I need help configuring my wireless network. I hate wireless, and I don't really know what I am doing.
First off, I have an ADSL connection and I have a Belkin Modem/Router all in one. This plugs into the back of my desktop PC with an ethernet cable. Then my sisters laptop and my other laptop connect to it via their wireless network cards. I did all this by running the 'belkin wizard', creating a netkey, and then once the 2 laptops detected the network after booting them up I added them accordingly.
So far so good - both laptops and the desktop PC are all sharing the same internet connection. This works fine. But what I want to do now is be able to share files - preferably between all 3 stations, but most importantly between the Desktop PC and the 2 laptops.
And I also want to be able to share my HP printer, which is currently connected to my Desktop PC. Can anyone help me? What I really need is a nice and simple step by step guide but all the ones i've got from google so far have not really helped me.
Cheers.
PS. Wireless is . |
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| Magnus |
I'll try to help. I have a similar setup and here is how I do things...
First, find out what the desktop's computer name is. Hold down the flying Windows key + Pause/Break. System properties appears. Click on the Computer Name tab and look at what the Full Computer Name is.
Lets say for example its called Mikey.
Now we need to turn off simple file sharing. Hold down the flying Windows key + E. Windows explorer appears. Click Tools, Folder Options, View. Scroll to the very bottom of the list and uncheck "Use simple file sharing."
Now on either of the 2 laptops, go to start, run, and using the desktop's computer name which in our exapmle is Mikey, type \\Mikey\C$ and hit Ok. You should be prompted with a username and password box. Here you will enter the username and password you use to log into the desktop computer. Once that is entered, on the laptop you should see a Windows Explorer window appear with all the contents of the C drive of your desktop computer. If there are other drives on your desktop you want to get to, change the C to a D, E, etc., so to hit the D drive you'd type \\Mikey\D$ in the start, run dialog box.
To get to the files on your laptops from your desktop, you'd do the exact same process. Disable simple file sharing on the laptop, find its computer name, then from the desktop, type \\laptopname\C$
To share out your printer, on your desktop go to start, settings, printers and faxes. Right click on your printer and go to Sharing. Put a dot in Share this printer. Now from your laptops, just type \\Mikey in the run dialog box and you should see a window pop up with the printer. Simple double click on the printer to add it to the laptops choices of printers.
Hope this helps. |
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| DJ Mikey Mike |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnus
I'll try to help. I have a similar setup and here is how I do things...
First, find out what the desktop's computer name is. Hold down the flying Windows key + Pause/Break. System properties appears. Click on the Computer Name tab and look at what the Full Computer Name is.
Lets say for example its called Mikey.
Now we need to turn off simple file sharing. Hold down the flying Windows key + E. Windows explorer appears. Click Tools, Folder Options, View. Scroll to the very bottom of the list and uncheck "Use simple file sharing."
Now on either of the 2 laptops, go to start, run, and using the desktop's computer name which in our exapmle is Mikey, type \\Mikey\C$ and hit Ok. You should be prompted with a username and password box. |
First of all, thanks for taking the time to help mate, I apprectiate it. But I get to this point where I type the name of my PC, and I am not prompted with a username password box. Instead I get an error box telling me "The network path was not found" which suggests to me that I have not setup my network properly. But then that makes me wonder how i've managed to share a net connection between the 3 of them. :conf:
Any ideas what's going on? |
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| _Ocean_Drive_ |
As the dude above said, go to printers, right click on the printer and enable sharing etc... Then on the icon, the share hand should appear.
Then go to each of the computers, and go to printers folder (Start > Printers & Faxes), say 'Add Printer' (in the tasks on the left column if using XP), and then browse for it in your network workgroup (All PCs must be in the same workgroup name e.g. MSHOME.
When you click, browse, it takes a while to search, so don't assume it's crashed, just give it a bit of time.
Does this help? :conf:
Btw, Belikin suck. |
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| Magnus |
Lets try something. Sometimes using an IP address works where using the computer's name does not.
On your desktop, go to start, run, type CMD, hit Ok.
Now type ipconfig and hit enter. Write down your desktop's IP address. Probably something like 192.168.1.100.
Now go to one of your laptops, go to start, run, type CMD, hit Ok. Now type ping 192.168.1.100 (or whatever your desktop's IP is) and see if you get a reply back. If you get a reply back, on one of the latops, go to start, run, and where you orginally typed \\Mikey\C$, try typing \\192.168.1.100\C$ instead and see if you get a username and password box. Also, try pinging one of your laptops from your desktop. If your desktop is 192.168.1.100, your laptops would probably be 192.168.1.101 and 192.168.1.102. See if you get a reply.
If you do not get a ping reply back from your desktop's computer by pinging its IP address, then its probably something to do with the way the internet connection sharing is configured. Let me know what happens with the above and we'll go from there. |
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| DJ Mikey Mike |
When I ping my desktop pc's ip on one of the laptops, it says:
| quote: |
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0
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And when I ping one of the laptop's ip on my desktop pc I get the same result.
Which means they're definitely communicating with each other, right?
However, this might be worth mentioning: When I typed 'ipconfig' on the laptop, after telling me what the ip address is, it goes on to say the following:
| quote: |
Ethernet adapater Local Area Connection:
Media State...... : Media disconnected
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I don't know what relevance that has - if any at all - so I went on to type the \\iphere\etc. command into run on the laptop as instructed. Once again I got no joy - I just get the same error as before.
I really think the problem stems from me knowing all about networks in the first place, and as such have probably missed something very important in the setup along the way.
Let me just give a run down of everything I did when setting this up in the first place:
- I plugged the 'router/modem' into my pc
- Loaded up my web browser and typed in belkins setup utility address - http://192.168.2.1/
- I ran the wizard and added a netkey
- I booted up laptop 1 - It told me a wireless network had been detected.
- I clicked the bubble, double clicked on the network available, and typed in my netkey. Magic.
- I repeated this for laptop 2.
Now it seems to me that i've failed to do something here. But I could be wrong. Once again, cheers for this. |
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| Magnus |
The fact that you are getting ping responses back from machine to machine means they are indeed communicating with each other so that is good. Do you have any sort of software firewalls like Zone Alarm or Norton or something along those lines? If so, try disabling these and then try the \\ipaddress\c$ again. Also, go to your control panel and open the Windows Firewall applet and make sure its turned off as well.
When you type ipconfig on your laptop and you get that media state disconnected message, this is because your built in ethernet port on the laptop has no ethernet cable physically plugged into it since you are stictly connected via your wireless connection. Its normal to see this message.
From the steps you've listed, it looks to me like you did everything by the book so I'm a bit puzzled why you cannot hit the file systems on any of your machines, especially since they are pinging back and forth. Try turning off any firewall software you have or the windows built in firewall if thats all you are using and let me know if that has any effect. |
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| Usuario |
Hey there, this might solve your problem, so pay attention!
Enable NetBIOS under each computer's network connection properties (tcp/ip protocol properties>advanced>WINS tab>Select Enable NetBIOS under tcp/ip). Now make sure every single computer belongs to the same workgroup (go to System properties, and click the Computer Name tab, click on the Change button at the bottom of the window and make sure every computer gets assigned the same workgroup name, and while you are there give every computer an easy name to remember like PC1, W1, W2, bluecheese or w/e, this will show all the computers with their respective names under a single location (My Network Places) which according to me, its cool xD. You will be asked to restart after making these kind of changes so go ahead and do so right away.
To share files and printers follow the steps mentioned before by the other great members.
Theres a lot of stuff that might prevent you from accessing files in other computers like folderspermission and ownership settings, windows services not started, firewalls blocking the printer and file sharing port, differences between the god damn lameness of win xp home file sharing and win's xp pro, and a few more. I hope you get it right this time.
Cheers :) |
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| DJ Mikey Mike |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnus
The fact that you are getting ping responses back from machine to machine means they are indeed communicating with each other so that is good. Do you have any sort of software firewalls like Zone Alarm or Norton or something along those lines? If so, try disabling these and then try the \\ipaddress\c$ again. Also, go to your control panel and open the Windows Firewall applet and make sure its turned off as well.
When you type ipconfig on your laptop and you get that media state disconnected message, this is because your built in ethernet port on the laptop has no ethernet cable physically plugged into it since you are stictly connected via your wireless connection. Its normal to see this message.
From the steps you've listed, it looks to me like you did everything by the book so I'm a bit puzzled why you cannot hit the file systems on any of your machines, especially since they are pinging back and forth. Try turning off any firewall software you have or the windows built in firewall if thats all you are using and let me know if that has any effect. |
Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you on this - I've not had access to the laptop for a few days so couldn't do the above.
But I have now, and it's worked. :) Fantastic. I've been using Black Ice with Kaspersky and my sister has Norton. I did actually disable these programs before, but only by disabling them via the toolbar. This time I completely booted them out by using the task manager and ending the 'process.' And it's worked - Almost!
My hard drive on the desktop PC is partitioned (C: and F: ) with Windows being installed on the C: drive. Now then, i've successfully managed to share F, but for some reason I can't seem to get C to be shared. When I click for it to be shared, the hand doesn't appear underneath the folder after I've clicked okay. When I right click and go to properties, every setting on C is identical to F, so I can't see why one would be working and not the other.
Any ideas? Getting F shared was the only one that mattered to be honest - this is just curiousity now really. Thanks for all your help with this, I've learnt a lot. :)
And cheers to anyone else that piped in as well.  |
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| Magnus |
| Glad you got it working! So doing \\ipaddress\c$ isn't working to access the C drive on your desktop? By default, all drives are shared out on a computer, known as the admin share. That is what the C$, D$, etc., references when you type that into the run dialog box. If that is not working I would have suggested using the manual share method by right clicking and going to sharing but you've already tried that. I can't at the moment think of what else could be preventing the C drive like that but I'll give it some more thought and come back later. |
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