Windows 2000 - XP wireless/wired network (+mac) problem

[willthegrinder]

Networking issue:

I have 3 computers:
A desktop running windows 2000
A laptop running xp
An imac laptop running mac os x

I have a wireless access point which gets the internet through the phone line, the 2 laptops then access the internet wirelessly through this, the desktop has an ethernet cable from the access point and gets the internet this way.

There is a printer connected to the access point with an ethernet cable, the two laptops can use the printer as they can find it over the wireless network when installing the printer off the set up CD, the desktop PC cannot find the printer on a network when installing using the CD

I have tried to use the set up a home office wizard on xp on the laptop to configure the two windows PCs on a network, but windows 2000 can't run the network configuration wizard, they are both on a workgroup of the same name, however all the Desktop can see in my network places is itself, the laptop can see nothing, and comes up with an error when i try and click on my workgroup.

I would like to set up all 3 computers on a network so I can share music files from the XP laptop and use them on the other computers and use the printer on the 2000 desktop, does anybody know what I need to do, at least to get the two windows PCs networked?

[GroundZero3]

instead of using the network wizard or the network neighborhood

map the printer and shares

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308582 (this works for xp and windows 2000)

for macosx

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/...19/mac_pc.html

[willthegrinder]

I can't map anything to a drive because when I browse for a shared folder, I can't find the laptop im using in the network neighbourhood

[GroundZero3]

Like i said, don't worry about network neighborhood. Map the drive

(also are you running any firewalls on any of your machines?)

I assume you can ping all the machine with no problems right?

[willthegrinder]

Yes, zone alarm, on the two Windows PCs, dunno about the MAC

those instructions aren't too clear, when I map the drive, what do I put under folder (eg server/share)

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by willthegrinder

Yes, zone alarm, on the two Windows PCs, dunno about the MAC

those instructions aren't too clear, when I map the drive, what do I put under folder (eg server/share)

First you need to make sure you've got all machines in the same workgroup, and also have file sharing activated. To check activation of "file and print sharing" go to your network connections, right click the appropriate icon, select properties, then make sure the sharing line is ticked.

I haven't had a need to network a printer yet - other than using one machine's printer as a shared one - so I don't know how to deal with the printer side of things so much, unless maybe you tried connecting it to the Desktop and sharing it out that way.

To map a drive (in Windows at least) you go into your windows explorer, go into tools, then map network drive.. Once in there you need to use the Uniform Naming Convention, the easiest way to do this (i.e. not browsing around) is \\IP address of machine you want\ If you want to get directly to a certain folder, then continue the above with the path to where you want to be.

You'll need to check your firewall settings, to check that it isn't stopping the information you want going through....

Other than that, I think you'd need to have your music stored in a format that all systems can understand/read from - FAT and NTFS both work on W2k and XP, I don't know about Mac.

[willthegrinder]

The problem was firewall settings, I have to add the computers to eachother's trusted lists, what's the safest way to do this so the whole network is trusted but prevents outsider access: ip address, subnet?