Home Networking: The Missing Manual

Chapter 5. Using the Network with Windows Computers

Surfing the Web from your newly networked computers is fun, no doubt. But some of the best parts of having a home network revolve around what's going on inside your house. You, proud network owner, have got your own wide world of resources waiting for you on the PCs sitting right within your home. The files, folders, disk drives, and printers—in fact, almost anything you can attach or store inside any computer on your network—can be shared among all your PCs. Sharing requires taking three basic steps:

• Naming the PCs and people on your network. Every computer needs a name. And, in many cases, you'll want to create user accounts for everyone on all the PCs you want them to have access to. You'll learn much more about both procedures in the first part of this chapter, but the user accounts in particular are a great way to keep everyone's stuff private and looking exactly the way everyone wants it to look.

• Designating what you want to share with others. You can share—or not—pretty much any file, folder, or hard drive that's attached to your computer. The second part of this chapter shows you how to designate what you want to share, as well as what you want to keep private.

• Learning how to access the items others have shared on their PCs. Once everyone's set up their computers to share, the next step is learning how to get to other people's stuff. This step is a piece of cake.

Note

This chapter covers how to share resources among Windows ...