Home Networking with XP

In home networking, sharing is what you do to make hard drives, folders, files, and peripheral devices available to all users of the network. You can configure your network so that the computers share hard drives (which automatically makes them share folders), or you can make it so that they don't share hard drives but can still share folders.
Even if your network does share hard drives, it's best to actually create shared folders because doing so makes it easier to get to those folders from the other computers on the network. When you open Network Neighborhood or My Network Places and double-click a computer icon, all the shares on that computer are displayed. If the only share is the hard drive, many mouse clicks will be needed to navigate through the drive to get to a specific folder.
You can create as many folder shares on your computer as you please, using the same steps you use to share a drive.
Here are the basic steps (note that the options will vary, depending on the operating system you're using) in My Computer or Windows Explorer:

1. In My Computer or Windows Explorer, right-click the icon for the folder you want to share and choose Sharing from the shortcut menu that appears.

2. Select Sharing or its equivalent, depending on your operating system (for example, it might be Share This Folder).

3. Click the Shared As (or New Share or the equivalent, again depending on your operating system) button.

4. In the dialog box that opens, name the share, and optionally, enter a description in the Comment field.

Using hidden shares
You can hide a shared folder from Network Neighborhood or My Network Places. The cool thing about a hidden share is that you can get to it if you know it exists and if you know the trick for accessing it. A hidden share can be a useful location for documents you don't want other network users to see when you can't easily set security options for the computer that holds those documents.
A hidden share works only if you keep in mind the basic rules about shares:
Shares are for remote users, and they're irrelevant when somebody is using your computer. The folder you hide isn't hidden from anyone who is using your computer.
If you want to hide even one folder on a drive, you cannot share the drive, because as soon as you do, every folder in the drive can be seen. Folders are children of drives, and when you share a parent, you share all its children.
A hidden share must be a parent share, because if it's a child of a share, it's visible in Network Neighborhood and My Network Places as soon as a remote user expands the parent share.
The best way to hide a folder from everyone (users who work at the computer and users who access the computer across the network) is to make it a subfolder of a folder you're not sharing, on a drive you're not sharing.

Create a parent folder for the express purpose of creating a subfolder that you want to hide. Give the parent folder an innocuous name so that nobody who uses your computer would be curious enough to expand the folder in Windows Explorer and find your secret. For example, create a folder on your drive and name it Tools or Maintenance. Then create a subfolder and name it Logfiles or another name that seems equally boring or technical. In Logfiles, you can keep all your naughty and nice lists, and no one will suspect a thing.

Another nifty place to put a hidden subfolder is in the Windows folder (C:Windows or C:WINNT in Windows 2000). There's no reason to share the Windows folder because its contents are specific to the local computer. Other people who use the computer are unlikely to scroll through the subfolders in the Windows folders, unless they're suspicious about your ability to be sneaky.
Creating a hidden share
To hide a folder's share, follow the steps just described to create a folder share. However, when you give the share a name, make the last character of the share name a dollar sign ($). That's it, the share is hidden. Easy, huh?

Getting to your hidden share from a remote computer
When you work at a different computer and you want to get to a file that's in your hidden share, follow these steps:

1. Choose Start --> Run.
The Run dialog box opens.

2. Type \\ComputerName\ShareName in the Open text box, substituting the real names of the computer and the share.
For example, if you're trying to get to a hidden share named Logs$ on a computer named Den, type \\den\logs$. A window opens to display the contents of your hidden share.

Keeping the secret a secret
When you use the Run command, Windows saves the command. The next time you open the Run command, the last command that you typed displays. Just click OK to run the command again. Very convenient, eh? Uh, not if you share the computer with other users.
The way to prevent your command from being visible to another user is to make sure that you log off when you leave the computer you were using. This ensures that nobody else can sit at the computer using your logon name and settings. The Run commands are saved on a user-by-user basis, so when a user named Mom is logged on, only commands issued by Mom are visible in the list.

Must use same version of Windows XP in order for these instuctions to work.

Network your PRINTER

The printing processes in Windows run smoothly and automatically most of the time, even across a network. However, knowing a few tricks makes network printing easier for all the users on your network.

Using a printer shortcut on the desktop
Sometimes you just need a printed copy of an existing document and you don't want to open the software, open the document, and use the commands that are required to print the document. If you put a shortcut to the printer on your desktop, you can drag documents to the shortcut icon to print them effortlessly. Follow these steps to create a printer shortcut on your desktop:

1. Choose Start --> Settings --> Printers.
The Printers folder opens.

2. Right-drag the printer icon to the desktop.
When you release the right mouse button, a shortcut menu appears.

3. Choose Create Shortcut(s) Here from the shortcut menu.

A printer shortcut appears on your desktop.
Using the printer shortcut is easy and timesaving. You can use it whenever you have any folder or window open (such as Windows Explorer, My Computer, or My Documents) that contains document files. Just drag a document file to the printer shortcut on the desktop. That's all you have to do - Windows does the rest.

If you right-click a document file instead of dragging it to a desktop shortcut, you can choose Print from the shortcut menu that appears. Again, Windows takes care of the rest.
Using separator pages to identify users
If everyone in your household uses the printers, you are likely to experience a lot of printer traffic. It's less messy if each job comes out of the printer with a form that displays the name of the owner. Luckily, such a form exists in Windows, and it's called a separator page. A separator page (sometimes called a banner) automatically prints ahead of the first page of each document.

The downside of separator pages is that they can be a huge waste of paper. They work best if most of your print jobs are made up of multiple pages. You may end up spending the money you save on ink purchasing ream after ream of paper. Also, if your household is filled with people who don't believe that "neatness counts," you'll just have one extra piece of paper per print job to get shuffled around in a big ugly pile.

Adding separator pages in Windows 95, 98, and Me
For a Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me print server, go to the computer that has the printer attached to turn on separator pages using these steps:

1. Choose Start --> Settings --> Printers.
The Printers folder opens.

2. Right-click the appropriate printer icon and choose Properties from the shortcut menu that appears.
The printer Properties dialog box opens, with the General tab in the foreground.

3. Click the arrow to the right of the Separator page list box and choose a Separator page type.
The Separator page choices are None, Full, and Simple. Both the Full and Simple separator pages contain the document name, the user name, and the date and time that the document was printed. The Full option uses large, bold type, whereas Simple uses the Courier typeface that's built into the printer.

4. Click OK.

Adding separator pages in Windows 2000 and Windows XP
If you have a Windows 2000 Professional print server, follow Steps 1 and 2 in the previous section "Adding separator pages in Windows 95, 98, and Me," and then follow these steps:

1. Click the Advanced tab.

2. Click the Separator Page button.
The Separator Page dialog box appears.

3. Click Browse to select a separator file.
Separator files have the .sep extension. Choose Sysprint.sep for PostScript printers or Pcl.sep for non-PostScript printers.

4. Click OK twice to close the dialog box.
Troubleshooting network printing
Sometimes when you're printing to a remote printer, you see an error message indicating that there was a problem printing to the port. (The port is the path to the remote computer that has the printer attached.) Before you panic, check the condition of all the hardware.

Check the print server
Computers that have printers attached (called print servers) have to be turned on if you want to print from a remote computer. If the computer is turned off, turn it on.
It doesn't matter whether you know the logon password for the user name that appears during the logon process; nobody has to be logged on to a computer to use its shared printer. The Windows operating system on that computer simply must be started.

Check the printer
Make sure that the printer is turned on. Check any buttons, indicator lights, or message windows that may be trying to tell you that something is amiss. When the printer's "ready" light isn't on, the most common problems are that the printer is out of paper, a paper jam has occurred, or the cartridge is out of toner (or ink).

Check the network cable
If the computer is on and the printer is fine, check the network cable. A cable that isn't connected properly can't send data.

Check the Windows XP SP2 Firewall
If a shared printer is on a computer running Windows XP SP2, make sure that the firewall is configured to allow access to the printer by remote computers. Use the following steps to view or change the firewall's settings:

1. Open the Properties dialog box for the network adapter.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. Click the Settings button.

4. Click the Exceptions tab.

5. Be sure a check mark appears in the File and Printer Sharing option.