Ginger writes in with a networking question
Q. I am trying to network my computers at home. We are already networked to the internet through a wireless router cable modem. But when I go through the process of setting up a home network, I cannot get it to work. First off I am not sure which choice to make about how I connect to the internet. I am on a cable modem router. There is one computer wired, but the rest are wireless. Is that a residential gateway? 2nd when it says to make a network setup disk, I put it on a flash drive and then load it on the next computer. It click on the network set up like it says, but then what choice do I make at the end? Do I want to make another setup disk with the new computer or just finish? Do I go back to the first computer so it can communicate? They will not recognize each other. I have been trying this for about 6 hours now. I am so frustrated. Please help!!!
A. It sounds like you may be trying to setup Internet Connection Sharing which uses client setup disks like you are describing. You shouldn't need to do this procedure to get the computers communicating with each other. Since all the computers can access the internet then they are already connected through the router. You should check the settings on the computers to make sure they are configured to be on the same network.
I would first check the workgroup names on all of them. Right click My Computer and select Properties. Then go to the Computer Name tab and make sure the Workgroup name matches on all of them. If not then pick a name and change them all to match and reboot.
You can also check the IP configuration on each of them to make sure that they are all on the same subnet and using the same subnet mask and default gateway. The IP addresses will be the same except for the last number most likely. For example one might be set to 192.168.1.100 and another at 192.168.0.101.
You should also share some resources such as files, folders or printers so you have something to browse for on the other computers.
After you have something shared then you can try and access the shared resources.
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