Topic: I got a computer/technical question....

[Stogi]

So I have a wireless network in my crib. I got a WPA password protection and everything. Now, I'm trying to connect my brother's laptop to mine so we can access each other's music.

We both have XP.

Can anyone help me?

[Nick DiMola]

You should be able to just go to "My Network Places" and your brother's computer should show up in the list. If it is not, you need to set up your computer to share stuff over the network. You can do this by right-clicking a folder and selecting "Sharing and Security." If your computer isn't set up it will let you click an option and run through a wizard to set everything up. Just make sure you put all of the computers on the same workgroup for easier access. After you have setup the computer for networking you can go through your HDD and pick each folder one by one that you want to share across the network. As mentioned earlier, these folders will show up in "My Network Places" under your computer name (if you are looking at this screen from your brother's computer).

I'm sure this sounded a bit cryptic, but if you have any particular questions let me know.

[Pale]

When you say access, is this a thing where you want to copy each others music across permanently, or are both computers going to always be on the network and you just want to be able to listen to each others?

If it's the latter I suggest either using sharing in iTunes, or, if you hate iTunes, putting up a DLNA server on each.  WMP 10 does that as does a bunch of other programs.

[Stogi]

Quote
Originally posted by: Mr. Jack
You should be able to just go to "My Network Places" and your brother's computer should show up in the list. If it is not, you need to set up your computer to share stuff over the network. You can do this by right-clicking a folder and selecting "Sharing and Security." If your computer isn't set up it will let you click an option and run through a wizard to set everything up. Just make sure you put all of the computers on the same workgroup for easier access. After you have setup the computer for networking you can go through your HDD and pick each folder one by one that you want to share across the network. As mentioned earlier, these folders will show up in "My Network Places" under your computer name (if you are looking at this screen from your brother's computer).

I'm sure this sounded a bit cryptic, but if you have any particular questions let me know.

I did that for both computers, but when I go to "My Network Places" nothing is there. So then I click "View workgroup computers" and I get this error:

Quote
'Blank' is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available.

And Pale, I don't want just my brother's music, but also his videos and pictures and even from time to time, documents.


EDIT: Now I clicked "Show icons for networkd UPnP devices" just out of curiosity and a "Residential Gateway" popped up. Upon clicking, it just takes me to my router's homepage.

[Shecky]

Hahah... more Windows "networking"  ... didn't we discuss this before?

[bustin98]

Start over from scratch. Take away the permissions on both systems, then re-apply. You should have two boxes to check, 'Share this folder on the network' and 'Allow network users to change my files'.

Even without another system, you should at least see your own in the 'My Network Places' if everything is set correctly.

Also, once you can see each other, I recommend setting the shared directory as a virtual drive. That will make browsing the files much easier. In Windows Explorer you can find it under 'Tools/ Map Network Drive'.

[Pale]

When in doubt, go to start>run and type...

\\192.168.1.105

Where that number is actually the IP address of the computer you are trying to connect to.  I used the above as an example.