Please help me set up home network

[M_Simmons]

We have a wireless system set up in my house, for a small business. We are running two Toshiba wireless laptops and one Dell desktop, through a Belkin router. Also connected is a HP printer.

I would like to set up the desktop machine to act as network storage (server?) so we can access the information on it from the other machines.

How do I go about doing this? I'm sure there must be a simple solution , but am a complete beginner when it comes to networking! Your help much appreciated.

P.S. I have spent hours searching the web for instructions, nothing seems to answer my question. Any tips or pointers appreciated. Cheers, Matt

 

[72montecarlo]

Well if you have Xp for starters you can go into 'My network places' and tell it to set up a home or small office network. You can get a workgroup established that way and have all the other computers you want to be able to connect to it use the same workgroup and you can share files that way.

 

[Praetor]

I would like to set up the desktop machine to act as network storage (server?) so we can access the information on it from the other machines

You can do this the fancy (i.e., Windows Server) way which is probably a bit of overkill, the insecure yet simple way (by making use of Windows Filesharing) or a happy medium using something like an FTP server (for which free and paid versions exist). I'd reccomend either the filesharing or FTP route

72montecarlo has given you the basics for getting the filesharing route setup, if that's what you want we can elaborate on that if required. The only reason I suggest the more secure FTP route is because of the wireless laptops.... by having logs and well established (and more easily enforced/established) rules you can help to limit wardriving and such

 

[Sophocles]

You want to setup a basic LAN.

http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lan.html

 

[Praetor]

Another good site with a lot of iuseful information: http://www.practicallynetworked.com/

 

[M_Simmons]

Well if you have Xp for starters you can go into 'My network places' and tell it to set up a home or small office network. You can get a workgroup established that way and have all the other computers you want to be able to connect to it use the same workgroup and you can share files that way.

Hi 72/Praetor/Sophocles, thanks for your responses.

I have checked out the method quoted above, following a tutorial here http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/net.asp, and also by making it up as I go along. This form of networking seems to be the way forward at this stage (until I have learnt more - I've hired a copy of "Networking for Dummies" (!) from the library... not that it's helping much...).

N.B. for the time being I am ignoring the desktop machine.

I have called the workgroup Mshome as recommended. I have set up the network on each computer. I have made a shared folder on each laptop. However when I come to map the network drive, no folders appear under "My Net Plcs/MS Win Net/Mshome" and I can't make a new folder.

When I use the "Add network place" wizard, it asks me to type an address e.g. "\\server\share", which I have tried and failed to do, or again I can browse for a folder, but can't get past Mshome.

Presumably I have to find Mshome, and put a folder in it?! Am I doing something wrong?

Once again your help is appreciated.

Regards
Matt

 

[M_Simmons]

When I use the "Add network place" wizard, it asks me to type an address e.g. "\\server\share", which I have tried and failed to do

P.S. Minor break-thru', I was able to get some response from this by using \\IPaddress_of_router\Mshome, but it froze when trying to open the link after I "finished"...........?

 

[Praetor]

When I use the "Add network place" wizard, it asks me to type an address e.g. "\\server\share", which I have tried and failed to do, or again I can browse for a folder, but can't get past Mshome.

"server" = machine Name
"share" = name of the folder you shared

So for example, if you have two machines, "Tower" and "Laptop" and you shared a folder called "SharedFolder", on the "Tower" machine, you'd click the "Map Network" button and type in "\\Laptop\SharedFolder" to access it.

but it froze when trying to open the link after I "finished"...........?

If you actually wait it out it will say something like "destination not reachable"

 

[M_Simmons]

Hi Praetor, thanks for your reply, it has helped a lot.

I have managed to set up a network on each machine, and added a network place to each machine, that is accessible through "My network places", but only on the machine I'm using - if I try to add a network place that is located on the other machine, it cannot find it.

When I "View workgroup computers", I get the following message:

"Mshome is not accessible. You might not have permission to use the resource. Contact administrator ... The list of servers for this workgroup is not available".

When trying to "map network drive", I can see the shared folder on the machine I'm working on, but when I select it "Ok" remains greyed out.

I don't know what the next step is. Should I delete everything and start again?! Regards, Matt

 

[Praetor]

1. What operating systems are involved.
2. Yeah i'd "delete" the network stuff and just start over

"Mshome is not accessible. You might not have permission to use the resource. Contact administrator ... The list of servers for this workgroup is not available".

Make sure both computers are on the same subnet

 

[M_Simmons]

Thanks

Praetor, thanks for your help. I haven't finished yet, however your guidance has been useful and much appreciated.

Regards

 

[Praetor]

Not a problem, glad to help!

 

[SENSEIS]

test to see if they can see each other by pinging them in the cmd amd making sure the firewalls are disable in each one.

 

[Praetor]

test to see if they can see each other by pinging them in the cmd amd making sure the firewalls are disable in each one.

Been awhile since ive dont "old-school networking" but if im not mistaken shared folders requires the same subnet however pinging does not