home wifi set up

big_moe

ok heres the deal. in the sitting room i have the eircom netopia wifi router thing. in the study i have a pc with a wifi card and its connected fine to the router wirelessly. i then have a printer usb'd to the pc working fine. now i have added an apple laptop into the situation with wifi. i can connect to the eircom router grand with it.

now, what i want to do is create a wireless home network so the laptop and pc can talk to each other and the printer. i dont want the pc used as a print server cos its not always on. i saw this. this will allow me to hook the printer up, through wifi, to the laptop, and also allow me use an ethernet cable to the pc.

question 1: how do i go about setting up the computers for file sharing & internet, through wifi with the eircom router??

question 2: how do i then add in that wireless print server to the network?

question 3: would it be a lot easier to use the wireless print server as an independant network?

cheers for any advice/personal experience!

cheers
moe

aidan_walsh

Question 3 really makes no sense, since a network is a group of computers that communicate with each other. I think you mean subnet, and no, you won't need to do that.

For question 1, first make sure that all the computers on your network are in the same workgroup. Do this by right clicking on My Computer and going into Computer Name in Windows XP (or Network Name in Windows 2000). Find where it says to rename the computer or join a domain and press the Change button. Make sure that the radio button for a Workgroup is selected, and that all the computers have the same one named. You will need to restart the computer is any changes are made.
After you have this done you will be able to browse to any computer in the same workgroup through the Network Neighbourhood, or by entering \\ComputerName in Windows Explorer. When you open one of these you will be able to see all shared folders on that computer.

You can set up folders or drives to share by right clicking on the folder/drive, and opening the "Share" tab. Make sure that Share This Folder is selected, and give it a name. If there is already a default name, you may need to use the New Share button. Select your own options for connected users, and click Ok when you're done. If you go that computer from any other computer you should be able to see and connect to the share now.
If you want to be able to see the shared folders as drives on your other computers, you can map the shares as drives through My Computer > Tools > Map Shared Drive, selecting a letter and navigating to the shared folder.

If you have software filewalls on any of the computers, you may need to check through them to see if they have an option to allow Network Neighbourhood traffic as some firewalls will block traffic between your computers. If they don't, allow all traffic on your subnet instead, this will have the same effect.

For question 2, set up the print server with a static IP address (the manual will tell you how this is done). When you have the printer connected, you may find there is a software tool included with the server that facilitates setting up the printer on the computers.
If there isn't, you should be able to do so manually by going to the Printers applet in the Control Panel. From there click into File > Add Printer and select A Network Printer, or printer attached to another computer. You can either let Windows search the network for one, or specify the details of where to find it and what type it is yourself.

big_moe

yeah ok, they are all on the same workgroup etc, but how do i connect them to each other??