Hi, I hav just set up a small home network, this consists of a laptop and two desktop computers. I'm new to all this networking lark and just wondered how i can, access computers and restrict access to programmes on the other network computers, is there any software built into windows xp professional to do such a thing?

Mt desktop computer runs XP Professional and the laptop runs XP Home, and the other desktop computer runs windows 98se. do all the computers on the network need to be running the same OS to carry out such tasks?

Please help!!

Cheers

 

With windows, you set up "shares" to allow people access to data on your machine. There is a certain amount of security you can do as to who can access what/do what - but that doesn't extend to programs. For that you will need to use a 3rd party piece of software I guess, but I've never tried it. W98 has little security, the XP machines you can lock down who can access what program but not remotely.

In corporate world it is done by user access & group policies etc

 

ok then thats fair enough, but the problem at present for me is that, on the laptop computer, i have shared things such as drive c: and other useful files, folders and directories but when i use 'My network places' and i click on 'view network computers' and try to access the laptop it wont let me, also i cant see the windows 98 computer in the network listings

 

I dont think you will see the other machines in my networks places unless you set up a domain with a server. ( i maybe wrong)

try just putting the ip address of the machine into windows exploere followed by \then drive letter thats shared followed by $.
would look like the following
http:\\192.168.1.1\c$

 

how do i find the IP address of another machine? or any machine for that matter!! windows has always detected the IP address automatically!

 

To find your IP address click Start > Run and type 'cmd'. In the box that pops up type 'ipconfig'

Once you've done that and have the IP of each machine on the network you can begin basic troubleshooting to ensure the connections are all ok:-

- Make sure the workgroup name on each machine is the same as the others - right click on "My Computer" and select properties - the current workgroup will be listed on the 'Computer Name tab.

- Try pinging the other machines on the network by opening up the command prompt and typing 'ping x.x.x.x' (where x.x.x.x is the IP of anothe PC on the network). Alternatively you can ping by computer name (e.g. 'ping PC1'). Make sure you can ping every other PC from each workstation.

K.

 

would i use the same procedure in windows 98?

Also wondereing how to browse other computers with out getting a security warning message?

 

Yes, ipconfig works on Win 98 as well

Once you've dealt with the connection side of things we can deal with accessing folders and printers etc. on other machines. It basically involves sharing the folders and items you want to access by right clicking and selecting the sharing tab of the properties box on each folder

 

With Windows 98, go to start\Run and type command

Its to same program but its launched in a different way

Darren

 

My apologies... you can also use winipcfg in Win 98

 

I have shared all the things on the other computers that i wish to access but when i open 'my network places' and click 'view network computers' that window sometimes won't respond and in other cases it wont display the other computers (adn never the windows 98 computer) and can also display a dialogue box saying i dont have access permissions to the network1

 

Are your XP machines formatted as NTFS volumes? If so, Windows 98 won't be able to see them which may explain a few things.

Right click and select properties on the C drive in Windows Explorer if you want to check.

 

yes both XP machines are formatted to NTFS but XP and Win98 can't find eachother!

 

Have you done as I asked above yet? Before you even consider accessing shares on other machines you need to establish a connection and confirm that it's working. Forget what you see in Network places for now...

Are the workgroup settings the same? Can you ping the other machines?

How are the machines connected?

 

Err basic here..

There is no DHCP server whacking out IP addresses

SO

Each machine has to manually have an IP address assigned.

Either use

10.0.x.x

or

192. 168.x.x

Where the 1st "x" is the same for all PCs and the 2nd "x" is not the same but is in the range 1-254

Accept the subnet mask offered by tab & ignore (for the moment) the gateway - we'll get there soon.


Do this before all the cmd/ping/ipconfig stuff

 

Thanks for all your help, sorted now very much appricated


cheers!

 

so where were the issues?

Report in man!!