Configuring Home Network

[Joe DeFuria]

I a networking noob, and was wondering if there's a "quick" answer to this:

I just set up a home wireless network...802.11g. All Belkin (Broadcom) hardware...wirelss router+ethernet switch, plus a PCI Desktop card, and a CadBus notebook card.

My main PC is cabled to the 802.11g router via ethernet cable, and my wife's PC has the wireless PCI adapter. Working great. My wife and I are both able to transfer files, and my wife prints on a printer that is attached directly to my PC. (I don't have a separate print server.)

Both of our computers are XP Home - Service Pack 1 machines. Our "workgroup" name is the default XP name, Mshome.

The "issue" I have is my laptop. It's Win 2000 Professional based. The wireless adapter is installed and working just fine. I can access the internet via wireless to the router, and the VPN passthrough works fine too.

The "last" thing I want to be able to do with this lap-top is access shared drives and printers on my home network. I'm pretty sure the security settings on the lap-top are such that I can't alter the workgroup name and many other network settings.

How do I get the lap-top to "login" to the Mshome workgroup, so that I share files / printers with my home network?

 

[Tim Murray]

The stupidly simple fake way to do it is to set the workgroup name on your XP computers to whatever the workgroup is on the laptop.

But, if you go to My Network Places (or whatever its Win2k equivalent is--Network Neighborhood?) and click Entire Network, it should show you a list of all of the workgroups. From there, you could probably map the drives/printers and have them available even though the workgroup setting is different.

 

[RussSchultz]

You might need to make sure the right protocols are installed on all machines.

For example, I believe on Win2k, windows filesharing is, by default, bound to NetBEUI. On WinXP, its bound to TCP/IP by default.

If this is the case, they'll never talk unless you install a common protocol on all the machines.

Or, they may just be having trouble seeing each other. Search the network for one of the computers (find computer) if the 'entire network' thing that The Baron suggests doesn't work.

 

[Dave H]

On a related note, be aware that XP Home has severely degraded networking capabilities, from an access control standpoint. Any folders you want to share in XP Home will have to be subfolders of Documents and Settings\All Users\ (and therefore shared with everyone on that computer), as well as shared with the world, including the Internet. (Presumably you have a firewall?)

This can be worked around to some degree by logging in to XP Home as Administrator (restart and go into safe mode), but I could never figure out how to get it to properly take permissions from my Win2k machine (doesn't mean it can't be done). In general this is the price you pay for having XP Home instead of XP Professional.

In the end I decided to just trust my firewall and only share what I really needed. But, if you're wondering why you can't get file sharing working iwth any sort of security, it's because you can't.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I'm not at home at the moment, but here's some of my thoughts / comments...appreciate some follow-up if I'm on the wrong track:

The stupidly simple fake way to do it is to set the workgroup name on your XP computers to whatever the workgroup is on the laptop.

You would think so, right? Unfortunately, I don't even know what the "workgroup" name is on the lap-top. (If I go to the system dialog box, there is no "network identification tab"...disabled apparently.) I do know the "domain name" that I log into though. Is that the same?

But, if you go to My Network Places (or whatever its Win2k equivalent is--Network Neighborhood?) and click Entire Network, it should show you a list of all of the workgroups.

I thought I did try that at one point, though my home network did not appear visible. (Could be a protocol issue that Russ brought up?) I'll try again and double check tonight. Note that when I go into the "Entire Network" (even when logged in at work), there is NOTHING there. I have to click on the left hand side-bar link that says "view entire contents" for the domains / networks to appear.

If this is the case, they'll never talk unless you install a common protocol on all the machines.

Is there a way to tell which protocol file sharing is bound to?

Or, they may just be having trouble seeing each other. Search the network for one of the computers (find computer) if the 'entire network' thing that The Baron suggests doesn't work.

I also thought I tried that last night as well with no success. (Searched for one of my home network computers from my lap-top. Here's a question, how can I find out my lap-top (win 2K's) computer name? So I try it the other wat around....search for my lap-top from my home computer network?

On a related note, be aware that XP Home has severely degraded networking capabilities,

Yeah, I had heard that this was the case. Though I also heard that, "whatever you do, do NOT use any XP networking wizards! Do everything manually."

Of course, I learned that AFTER I tried some of the wizards, which did in fact screw things up. I then did a clean XP install on BOTH of my machines, and manually (despite about 3 or 4 warnings) turned on file sharing. That's where I'm at right now, with every working perfectly as far as the home network is concerned. (Though perhaps with some security holes.)

At this point, I am only sharing one physical hard drive on my machine as a place to transfer files back and forth....and it's not the drive windows or critical data is installed on. So, it's obviously not located under "Documents and Settings."

I don't need to transfer files that often, but I will need to have the printer shared constantly.

(Presumably you have a firewall?)

At this time, all I have is the NAT firewall inherent in the Router.

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProd...n_Id=201522&pcount=&Product_Id=136493

I understand that this is the most basic type of protection, and am willing to live with it for the time being. Are my "non shared" drives pretty much safe, and only the shared one at significant risk?