Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

the home PC network enigma

(1/3) > >>

Steven Avery:
Hi,

Supposedly, Windows theoretically, possibly, maybe is all set up for networking out of the box.  The prenamed MSHOME in an XP network section, the Homegroup function ... if you have all Window 7, the "Workgroup" name given to the Windows 7 network that can be the name you apply to all the puters, as suggested by one article.   Yada and a yada and a yada.

However, in my experience, it never works well. Things don't want to connect, or they don't want to stay connected.

=============

Everything here is behind a router.

The goal in my system is 3 PC's , 1 on Windows 7, 2 on XP.  One of those I plan to dual boot Linux (really, this time). Also maybe a laptop occasionally saying hi by cable or wireless.

Only two systems are really fundamental a Windows 7 and my super-clean reinstall XP.  The laptop and an old XP are sort of auxiliary.  I am working with a KVM switch attempt as well. (Which has its own tricky aspects, whether hardware or software.)

Here is the rub.  I either am quite bumbling, or the Windows network is a bubblegum and scotch tape method. 

===================

Remember "Lantastic" ?  Well, what do we do today ?  Set up a VPN ?  Set up a real network with a server or with "Active Directory" to pretend to be skilled in that realm ?  (oops, might cost $$).  I would not mind dedicating a PC largely to traffic cop and working with Spiceworks, but that would be more play than need.  And it still does not tell me HOW to go.

What are my major options ? What do you suggest ?  Am I really supposed to use MS ? My gut says there is some other way that is simply better, but I want to hear from the experts.

Since I prefer XP to Windows 7, I want to keep my mixed Windows hybrid group for now.

Steven

techidave:
I am with you Steven.  Its harder than it needs to be.   :D  I have tried it a few years ago... ok... probably 4 or 5 years.  I had trouble getting it setup then, so I haven't really tried it since then but I need to.  I have 2 W7 pro, 3 XP pro, Mac 10.6, and a couple of iPads (which i know cannot network to them).

I would appreciate some down to earth, easy to read and do instructions.

wraith808:
It is quite a bit harder than it needs to be.  I've found that it works... sometimes.  More reliably if you're going to static IPs.  Other than that, I'm not much help... I have a hard time at times connecting from one computer to the other.  Thankfully my printer and NAS being on static IPs means it doesn't matter as much... but still, every time I try to connect to other computers (or use software that does), it's hit and miss.  I've even profiled the connection, and I see what's wrong.  But I just don't know how to fix it/don't want to invest the time.

The only step that I've found means anything (at least most of the time) is if you can ping the other computers.  If you can do that, then you're at least on the right path.

skwire:
I've always used shared drives (Samba) between Windows and Linux boxes and can't recall ever having a problem.  In other words, I don't ever use Network Neighborhood or its ilk, just mapped drives.

4wd:
I have two Win7HP, an XP Pro computer, FreeNAS based computer and an XP Pro netbook all happily communicating with each other behind a router.  The XP Pro computer is accessed exclusively via the network, (RDP, FTP, etc), as it's headless.

The computers are all in WORKGROUP, (ie. standard for XP Pro and Win7), I don't use passwords on the accounts, (all single user machines), except for where it's required for Task Scheduling in which case those computers AutoLogon to the main user account at boot.

Static IPs, as wraith mentioned, but this is mainly so I can readily access them by typing in an IP without having the system try and lookup a name/IP relationship or having to edit host files on multiple machines.
The following settings applied to the Win7 machines:

the home PC network enigma

The main one being the 40/56 bit encryption, I've found it makes the connection to XP computers more reliable, (but it does work with 128bit also - just seems hit and miss for some reason).  The rest is personal preference, (username/account, public folders, etc).

On the XP side I use a few registry tweaks to make connecting to the machines a little bit more reliable/faster.

I can reliably just share a folder on a machine and expect to access from another whether it's 7->XP or vice versa.

And to follow up on what skwire just mentioned, I don't use mapped drives, network neighbourhood - just FTP or SAMBA.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page