Trouble File Sharing

[mike]

We have a desktop and a laptop computer. Both are running with W XP
Home Edition. The desktop is connected to a router with an Ethernet
cable and the router is connected to a cable modem which gets the
desktop out to the WWW. The laptop is able to get to WWW wireless. All
of this works fine.
We are having trouble 'file sharing'. By file sharing I mean, I
want to be able to access a file that resides on the desktop from the
laptop. Or vice versa. To accomplish this I have used Windows Explorer
and selected a folder in My Documents. I then right click on the folder
and select Sharing and Security. On the sharing tab I select Share This
Folder On The Network, then Apply and OK. The drop down menu closes and
there is no error message. At this time I am assuming the folder has
been set up to be 'shared' by the other computer.
Now when I go to the other computer I am unable to find the shared
folder. I do not know if I did something wrong when I shared the
folder, in this example on the desktop, or if I am doing something
wrong on the reading computer, the laptop.
TIA.

 

[Charlie Tame]

In the first place you need to be a bit careful what you share on wireless,
you can read up on that so that's something for later. There should be a
sharing tab and a security tab, and you also need to give the NTFS file
system some details of who you want to be able to access that folder and
what level of access. That's what the security tab does.

The easiest way to do this is to set up an identical user with an identical
password on each machine and try it as you have already set it up, see if
that helps. You don't need the desktop running that user, but the user has
to be set up on it. The laptop does need to be running as that user.

For security advice you might want to find the networking newsgroups on this
server, the pros there are more familiar with possible risks and common
problems.

Charlie