Home Network

[Helen49]

Am trying to network a desktop and laptop using hardwire. Have followed the wizard on both computers and despite the process appearing to go ok, they are not 'seeing' each other. Anybody got any ideas or a pointer to a previous posted answer please?
H49

[Gertrude the Wombat]

There are a vast number of things that could be wrong, starting with getting the wiring wrong. Exactly how have you connected the computers and with exactly what sort of cable?

[Helen49]

Cat5e Crossover Patch Cable 'for PC to PC connection'
H49

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Sounds like a good start.

Next is what you said to the wizards. (Personally I try to avoid using wizards for this sort of thing, because I never know what they're going to do behind my back - I prefer to set up the configurations manually because then I've got some clue as to what is going on.)

What operating systems are the machines running, and exactly what did you say to the wizards?

Assuming you've chosen to use TCP/IP, what is the output from the ipconfig command (or whatever it's called on your operating system) on each machine?

And what do you mean bythey are not 'seeing' each other ? Is this at the shared folder/shared printer level, or at the ping level, or something in between?

Are you running any sort of firewall or antivirus software on either machine? If so, are things any better if you turn it off?

(Possibly solutions at this point range from "switch both machines off and on again and wait an hour" to a very longwinded trawl through all the settings.)

[FJJP]

Aspects of this subject have been covered a number of times on this forum. Rather than wait for specific answers to your queries, it might be quicker in the long run if you ran some searches (link at the top of the page). For example, I ran a search using the keyword 'home networking' and came up with this list of topics:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/search.php?action=showresults&searchid=1428907&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

Might help...