19 April 2010

If you have more than one computer at home on a network you may want to share files and printers between them, we’ll show you how to do it in this tutorial!

As more and more of us buy several computers or laptops for home it will become more convenient to share files and printers over the network. This tutorial assumes that the network is functioning properly and all computers are connected to it.

The preliminaries

First we need to make sure that all your computers are in the same workgroup to do this this we need to go into the control panel.

 

Click on “System and Security”

Under System click on “See the name of this computer”

On the left hand side in the menu click on “Advanced system settings”

The default workgroup name for Windows operating systems is “Workgroup” (How original… that guy MUST have got a bonus) You can change it if you like or leave it as is but it MUST be the same for all the computers you wish to share with (Advanced users will argue with me on this one, but for the sake of simplicity we’ll leave it at that.)

The next thing we need to do is modify a few sharing options and guess what? We’re going back to the control panel. Keep in mind this step needs to be done only on the computer that is doing the sharing.

Click on “Network and Internet”

Then click on “Network and Sharing Center”

In the menu on the left hand side click on “Change advanced sharing settings”

Click on the down arrow to expand “Home or Work” setting

Scroll down until you find “File and printer sharing” and make sure it is turned on

Continue scrolling down and find “Password protected sharing” this needs to be turned off otherwise you will need to create matching user accounts on each of the computers you want to share with.

Printer Sharing

Go to “Devices & Printers”

Find the printer you wish to share and right-click on it to get the context menu.

Click on “Printer properties”

Click on the “Sharing” tab

Check the box that says “Share this printer” and name the printer as other will see it on the network. Then click “OK” to finish

In the status bar in the bottom of you window you will see information displayed about your printer. The two people icon just beside “State” indicates that the printer is being shared.

File Sharing

Open Windows Explorer

Find the folder you wish to share right-click and in the context menu that appears click on “Properties”

Click on the “Sharing” tab then click “Share”

In the new window drop down box click on “Everyone”

Then click “Add” then “OK”

That’s it your folder is shared now!

Accessing the shares

The worst is done all that’s left is getting to the shares over the network.

Open up Windows Explorer and type the name of the host computer preceded by two backslashes (The ones leaning to the left)

If everything is set-up properly you should see a list of share from the host computer from here you can access all folders like you would normally.

If you double-click on the printer share Windows will automatically create a connexion to the printer in “Device and Printers” and you can now print to this printer as if it was connected directly to your computer

That’s it!

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