Follow these simple steps to set up a home network

jjones | Guides | 04/09/2007 09:00am
No Comments

Networking your PCs has many advantages. It enables different users to share files and applications as well as a single internet account. The simplest way to network two computers is to run a cable or a wireless connection between them, and if they’re both running Windows Vista you can do all kinds of interesting things, and even share software. Before you can do that, though, you need to get them to talk to each other. As we’ll discover, that couldn’t be easier.

We’ve got two Windows Vista PCs, both with networking hardware: our desktop’s connected via Ethernet to a wireless router, and our laptop is accessing the same router via Wi-Fi.

Before we can get our two systems to talk to one another we need to ensure that they’re both set to discover new networks; to do this, click Start > Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center and turn on Network Discovery (if it isn’t on already).

The trick with networking is to take a lessis- more approach and limit access to the bare minimum. For example, if people only need to view the files in your Public folder but don’t need the ability to edit them, it makes sense to limit their access accordingly, so you should use the Network and Sharing Center to give read-only access rather than full access.

Conversely, you’re not limited to sharing the Public folder and nothing else if you don’t want to be. If file sharing is switched on in the Network and Sharing Center you can share any folder by rightclicking on it in Windows Explorer and clicking Share.

1. Hello, hello. If you click on View Full Map you should see something like this. In addition to our internet connection, our desktop PC (Dell) can see our laptop (Liz_laptop). Right-click on the other person’s computer and click Open.

2. Easy Explore. As you can see, we’re now looking at our laptop, or at least, the bits that our laptop’s owner has given us permission to look at. In this example we’re able to browse the Public and Printers folders.

3. See the files. Double-click on Public. If you’ve got read-only access to this folder you’ll be able to open and copy files from the other PC, and if you’ve got full access you can edit or delete the files or copy files into the folder from your hard disk.

4. Wait a bit. If you wish, you can ensure that these files are always available to you even when you’re not connected to the other computer. To do this, go back one step, right-click on Public and click Always available offline.

5. Simple Sync. Open Sync Center from Control Panel > Network and Internet > Sync Center. You’ll see that there’s an entry already in there – Offline Files. Doubleclick on the icon to see more.

6. Offline Browsing. You should now see the folder you wanted available at all times, in this case the Public folder on the laptop. Click on Browse to see the contents of that folder.

7. Keep working. Here the laptop is no longer connected to our network, but the files we selected are still available. By using the local copy of our laptop’s files, any changes we make will be applied to the originals when we synchronise our files.

8. Update everything. Return to Sync Center and above Offline Files you’ll see two buttons: Sync, which
synchronises files between the two PCs immediately, and Schedule, which enables you to sync files automatically at specified times.

9. More options. Control Panel’s Network and Sharing Centre provides some additional options. Under Public Folder Sharing you can limit people’s access to your Public folder, so people can’t edit files, or you can password-protect shared files.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.