Peer-to-Peer

[Jessica]

Could someone help me with creating a 6 pc windows XP peer-to-peer network

 

[Big_Al]

(e-mail address removed) said this on 3/13/2009 6:19 PM:

Could someone help me with creating a 6 pc windows XP peer-to-peer network

Give us a bit of history. You have 6 PC's on a router? Or what kind
of connection do you have.

That or visit this site http://ezlan.net and browse the subjects.
There is a ton of info here.

 

[Jessica]

I have a hub and 6 crossover cables, I also have DSL

 

[Malke]

I have a hub and 6 crossover cables, I also have DSL

You don't want a hub; you want a router. Then if you want to share
files/printers:

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a stateful
firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the
built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having
identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying
to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this
will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a
third-party firewall or have an antivirus/security program with its own
firewall component, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I
usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be
192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct
subnet. Refer to any third party security program's Help or user forums for
how to properly configure its firewall. Do not run more than one firewall.
DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE
PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES. If you wish a machine to boot directly
to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you
can do this. The instructions at this link work for both XP and Vista:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).

E. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users' home
directories or Program Files, but you can share folders inside those
directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder.

Malke

 

[Jessica]

Thanks so much for such a breakdown of procedures. But, here is where I am
having the problem.

Only working with 2 computers as followed for now

1st I disconnected my Internet connect and connected the "cross over cable"

I configured each computer with it's own unique computer name and the same
workgroup name,

I rebooted the computers and lauched the view the workgroup computers which
I was successful in viewing.

I clicked on one of the computers and it ask me for a password

I wanted to share files and folders and the printer, but I did not see the
option when I right clicked on the folder.

-- Peter

 

[almostbob]

I think you set share permissions from the local computer,
not from the remote,
you can only set shares on your own drives, which are then accessible to
others

 

[Malke]

Thanks so much for such a breakdown of procedures. But, here is where I
am having the problem.

Only working with 2 computers as followed for now

1st I disconnected my Internet connect and connected the "cross over
cable"

I configured each computer with it's own unique computer name and the
same workgroup name,

I rebooted the computers and lauched the view the workgroup computers
which I was successful in viewing.

I clicked on one of the computers and it ask me for a password

It asked you for a password because you didn't create identical user
accounts and passwords on both computers. Please re-read the information I
already gave you about that.

Malke