Domain-based PCs on Home network - possible?

[Paul Andrews]

Hi all who can help,

I have Win XP Pro running through an ADSL modem for Internet access. The
PC is configured for Internet Connection Sharing and three children's
notebook computers can access the Internet over the home network using this
facility. No problems here.

The three student computers are primarily used at school and work to logon
to the appropriate school domain. No problems here.

HOWEVER, we want to share the printer on the home 'router' PC so that the
school computers can print (and share file space) on the home 'router' PC.

I cannot get any local 'workgroup' sharing to work with these domain-based
notebook PCs.

Any advice on how to get this working is most appreciated.

Thanks.

Paul

 

[Doug Sherman [MVP]]

You should be able to do this without joining the student notebooks to the
local workgroup:

1. Share a file on the XP Pro machine, give the Everyone group Full
Control.

2. On a student computer click Start/Run \\XPprocomputername\sharedfilename
ENTER.

3. If you get an Explorer window, then you can simply simply create a
shortcut to the share on the student's notebook. If you get a log on
screen, enter the user name and password of the account used to log onto the
XP Pro machine. If this works, you can create the shortcut, and you may be
able to eliminate the logon screen by creating a user account on the XP Pro
machine which matches the user name and password used to log onto the
student computer.

4. If you get an error message when you try
\\XPprocomputername\sharedfilename , try \\XPproIPaddress. If you still get
an error message, create a user account on the XP Pro machine which matches
the username and password used to log onto the student computer and make
this account a member of the administrators group. If you still get an
error message, then you will have to log onto the student local machine
instead of the domain. At the student logon screen, if you have 3 lines:
username, password, and domain, then click the triangle on the domain line
and select computername (this computer). You may not be able to log on with
the domain username and password - you need to use a local machine user name
and password. If you do not have the domain line in the logon screen, click
the Options button.

5. If you can access a shared file, then you should be able to use a shared
printer. On a student notebook use the Add Printer Wizard to install a
network printer. The printer is called
\\XPprocomputername\sharedprintername.

6. Browsing may be relatively seemless if you join the XP Pro machine a
workgroup with the same name as the NetBIOS name of the student's domain -
eg. NetBIOS name of domain.com = domain.

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP


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