Network Router Wireless LAN

[VirgUSA]

Daughter has new laptop and is trying to set up a local network using a wireless router. She has windows XP home on the desktop and windows XP Pro on the laptop. The desktop does not have a wireless network card.

We finally got the LAN to work yesterday. It worked for about 30 minutes and we have not been able to reconnect it again. She can get on the internet fine but cannot see the desktop from her laptop and the other way around. Why would the internet work but not the local area network?

Would it help to get a wireless card for the desktop?

[Chewy]

leave the desktop hard wired(cat5) to the router, run the network setup wizard on both computers, it will autodetect the internet but then set up your lan, name a workgroup(same on both computers), turn on file and printer sharing. turn off both computers reboot, they should now see each other

xp pro will be the boss of the lan tho

[VirgUSA]

Chewy,

Thanks for the reply. We have ran the network setup wizard and it worked for maybe 30 minutes. It has not worked since but internet connection still works.

[Chewy]

the desktop is connected by cat 5 cable right?

running sp2 for home?

if all else fails use the create network setup disk on whichever computer had the latest greatest OS and make sure you don't try to join a domain

[VirgUSA]

I think she has done that but will again and start the network set up disk with the laptop, XP Pro. The Desktop, XP Home SP2, is connected with a cat5 cable.

[photo_angel2004]

xp pro will be the boss of the lan tho

I never knew that. That does expain a few things for me now though.

My sons computer has XP pro and mine is XP home.

Learing something new every day.

I do know I had a lot of problems with my network with running XP on 1 computer and 98SE on another and XP pro and the third so I took the 98SE off the net work here and all seems to be much much better.

[Chewy]

I think she has done that

fatal mistake, when I play network guru I do everything myself

make sure you don't have any other firewalls active like zone alarm

xp's networking is excellent, you can even reboot a remote computer if you set your mind to it

[Chewy]

@PA

to network Wxp pro and inferior OS's, just start the wizard on pro and create the disk(floppy), take it to the other computers and run the file, it might ask you for the OS disk, fine, then reboot them.

the first computer up tries to take control and be the browsemaster, boss,
that's just a term for the computer that keeps track of shared resouces and permissions etc.

whenever a superior OS joins the workgroup there is an election and OS's like pro and W2k win the election and then become the boss

the worst thing you can do is let a lan run without rebooting for a long time

we had a situation where the worst computer running xp pro would stay on for weeks and corrupt the whole lan, that's why I learned to reboot that computer remotely

btw, that's the advantage to W2kserver or W2003 server, it wins the elections hand down

[photo_angel2004]

@PA



we had a situation where the worst computer running xp pro would stay on for weeks and corrupt the whole lan, that's why I learned to reboot that computer remotely
btw, that's the advantage to W2kserver or W2003 server, it wins the elections hand down

OK that has me a bit worried now, My computer has XP home and my sons XP PRO, they are both connected to the router BUT my sons pc has been turned off for about 6 weeks now and mine is on all the time. Is there a chance there may be problems when we boot my sons PC back up again?

[Chewy]

the only problem is if his computer is screwed up and can't keep track of the shares

let's say you had a third computer on the lan, a 98 computer, and you were accessing that computer from yours, when his boots up, the election takes place, everything comes to stop till home hands over the share info to pro.

the best way to run a lan is to turn off all computers and then boot the superior OS first, then inferior OS's later

and the best computer is running the superior OS or booted first