Home networking using netopia 2247nwg router

spud56

Hi,
I am trying to set up a home network using a windows xp system connected by cable to router and a windows 7 laptop connected using wireless. each pc can access the internet but I cannot get them connected to share files and printer connected to xp machine. I have tried all the steps suggested by windows on both machines. I also have an xbox 360 connected by cable to the router which can connect to xbox live but I am unable to share media with the xbox as windows cannot detect it.
Hope someone can help.
Thanks.

keefg

I'll move this to the computing forum, I think you will get more assistance there.

Capt'n Midnight

File shareing between XP and 7 is not as easy as you would like

make sure both are on the same workgroup
make sure the username and password are the same on both
make sure you only share one folder and not the whole machine in case a third party connects

then you need to look at firewall settings to allow the other machine to connect

spud56

Thanks for the help

spud56

What settings will I have to change. I have zonealarm installed as the firewall I also have the windows firewall turned off but it seems to switched on in the advanced settings of the network connections. Will I have to enable advance settings for the network adapters.
Thanks

Fysh

spud56 wrote: »

What settings will I have to change. I have zonealarm installed as the firewall I also have the windows firewall turned off but it seems to switched on in the advanced settings of the network connections. Will I have to enable advance settings for the network adapters.
Thanks

In Zonealarm you'll need to create a trust between your two computers - if you use dynamic addressing you can do this easily (though technically more riskily) by creating a trusted range of addresses encompassing all the addresses likely to be allocated by your router's DHCP server. If you use manual addressing, just create a rule in each machine's Zonealarm configuration to include the other computer's IP address in the list of trusted addresses. You can then allow some or all traffic between the machines.

If you're doing this I would strongly suggest making sure that your network is robust - ie set the SSID to not be visible, use the highest strength of encryption available (eg WPA2 instead of WEP if possible), enable MAC address filtering if possible so that unidentified machines can't easily connect.

spud56

Thanks for the information I will try and configure the pc's later.
Thanks again.

spud56

I have tried adjusting the fire wall settings but no luck. I have ran the network set up wizard on the xp machine an it completed the operation. I created a network set up disk but I did not run it on the other machines. Is it possible that I have to change some settings in the router?. Is there a guide to networking using eircom broadband.
Thanks Again.

Fysh

spud56 wrote: »

I have tried adjusting the fire wall settings but no luck. I have ran the network set up wizard on the xp machine an it completed the operation. I created a network set up disk but I did not run it on the other machines. Is it possible that I have to change some settings in the router?. Is there a guide to networking using eircom broadband.
Thanks Again.

You shouldn't need to - basically you want the router to act as your internet gateway and act as a DHCP server for any devices connected to it (whether wirelessly or over cabled connection). Once this is done you should just need to configure the PCs themselves to allow them to see each other.

In Zonealarm - go to Firewall > Zones, click Add and do one of the following:
1) If you use dynamic IP address assignment (ie you just connect to the network and the DHCP server in your router does everything else) select "IP Range", select "Trusted Zone" and enter the first and last IP address available on your router's DHCP server (eg 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.255). Set a description and save the new entry. Do this on both computers, restart both, then go through the usual process for sharing directories In Windows and you should be able to see them over the network.

2) If you assign static IP addresses select "IP Address", then for each computer select Trusted Zone, enter the IP address for the other machine along with a description, reboot both and go through the usual process for sharing directories In Windows and you should be able to see them over the network.

If neither of these works, we'll need to know:
1) What if anything you've got in ZoneAlarm under the Firewall > Zones view (preferably via screenshot;
2) What's going on with each computer's network connection (preferably a screenshot of either a commandline-dump of "ipconfig /all", but either text or a screenshot of the NIC status will do);
3) How you have shared directories on each machine;
4) What you get on each machine when you try to ping the other machine's address;
5) How you are trying to access content over the network from each machine.

Hopefully that should be enough to figure everything out.