Help - XP Networking

My God, why is it so hard to put computers on a network with WindowsXP?? The way my home network is set up, all computers run to a central router, then to the modem>internet. If you use the network configuration tool with XP and tell it you have that setup, a message pops up saying.. In my own words: "We don't like this meathod, so we are going to bend over backwards to stop you. Soultion, Spend another $500 on a server you don't really need so you can't hack yourself on your network." Don't give me this security BS, the only people that are even on my home network are My-PC, My-PC #2, My-Notebook, and My-Xbox. I don't fricking care about security, I just want everything to work. Oh yeah, back in the day when I had 2000 on everything, all I had to do was right-click a folder, set it to shared, and everyone access it. But now, it takes an act of congress to share something. I have looked for a while, and the only solution I could find was to set up an ftp server on one of my PCs. What I want to know is if I can have shared folders that all can access over my network connection.

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yes you can have shared folders over a network with out setting up a ftp. I am not sure of the method anymore as I haven't used a home network in a while. but I think that the option is in the security and sharing tab in the folders properties.

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I understand your pain... having been where you are the first time I tried setting up our home network using XP, Ethernet, and TCP/IP... I seriously fantasized about committing a number of heinous crimes... but I digress.

I got a lot of very useful help from the newsgroups and chatrooms here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/default.mspx and learned quite a few things from the articles and tutorials here: http://www.homenethelp.com/

I ended up using my main rig as the server hosting the internet connection sharing, and it's worked very well for us. We have five computers networked here using XP, Ethernet connections, one router and TCP/IP with no serious problems once I finally got it set up properly. And we all share folders, printers and even some drives across the net.

I wish you luck. I think that once you get it sorted, you'll find XP really does work well for home networking.

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I actually found it easier to create a network on xp than on older os's.
to have shared files/folders, you need to make sure you have microsoft networking files installed from your os cd.then it's as easy as assigning names to each computer(which ms wil do for you, and then assigning description (like "Suzy's puter" "joes puter" etc.) and making sure you have assigned each puter to the SAME workgroup. name your workgroup something, like Lan,george sam whatever, then make sure each puter has the same workgroup. then it's just a matter of going to my network places, then view network group puters.
once you've done that on all the puters, whenever the puters are on, you should be able to see those puters on your own, as shared files/folders

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You also have to have all the computers log in to the network with a password, and the user/password has to be a user on the PC you want to share.

For instance, I can set up an old win98SE machine to share files just by right-clicking the folder/drive, and setting it as shared. On win2k+, though, in order for THAT machine to have access to the win2k machines, it has to be a user with the desired permissions.

Set up a default username/password for each machine. Log in as an administrator on the machines that will serve your files, and set up accounts for those usernames with the appropriate passwords. If you want Computer A to access a shared folder on Computer B, then make the username/password of Computer A an account on computer B, and then share the files as you normally would.

What people don't understand is when you log into a NT workgroup, you are logging into the computers you want to access. If you aren't a user on that computer, you won't be able to access it. This is how it works for me, your own mileage may vary.

P.S. There are some services that are required for sharing. Even if you have the protocol installed, if you have done a security checklist and removed some from 'automatic', then you may not have the 'sharing' option at all.

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Oh man, do I understand your pain

I have the same configuration. I set up tcp/ip for internet access and an ipx protocol for the shared network. What a pain. XP machine, W2K machine, and a Win98 machine. I put ZoneAlarm on all 3 machines, but the exact same settings which worked on one machine were too strict for another and had to be tweaked. The DSL router has NAT enabled, but I'm not exactly sure what that means. I think that to the outside world, I'm only a router and not a computer (or something).

Now, occasionaly, I get the following in the events viewer:

The master browser has received a server announcement from the computer xxxxx that believes that it is the master browser for the domain on transport NetBT_Tcpip_{some long number). The master browser is stopping or an election is being forced.

? That sounds kinda nasty

and

The name "HOMENET :1d" could not be registered on the Interface with IP address xxx.xxx.x.101. The machine with the IP address xxx.xxx.x.100 did not allow the name to be claimed by this machine.

So why wasn't it allowed. All the ip addresses are listed in ZA as trusted.

Phhhhtt!!

computers...bah humbug

Good luck

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