Networking... How?

[Herc Jerk]

If i may ask for some of your knowledgeable thoughts on networking... before i go off half-cocked and make a mess of something i have not done before (something i have proved to be quite good at...)

I would like to hook together my HP Omnibook4150 (win2000, P3 650mhz, 256MB RAM) with my Lady's Dell Inspiron (win2000, P3 700mhz, 320MB RAM)- both are laptop computers. Extra devices i would like to hook up and have accessable to both are a USB Kodak CD-R/RW and a USB Lexmark colour Scanner/Copier, and from time to time a USB digital camera.

Recently i tried to network them via her inbuilt ethernet port and a PCMCIA ethernet card that i purchased for mine. At the time i had winXP and she had winME. This did not work- i connected the wire directly from mine to hers, ran the "networking wizard" in XP, made a floppy that it said to and ran it on the ME machine. It kept saying a network cable was unplugged.

Since then, and having installed win2K on both, i have thought that maybe it would be best if we could network via a USB hub seeing as how our "periferal devices" are USB run. Is this possible and does it make sense? Can i have the periferals running off a USB hub and accessable to one or both computers? Would there be conflicts if both machines tried to access say the CDRW at the same time?

As i am a contractor and go away for extended periods and her work often req taking her machine, i would like to set up a system that allows one or other or both machines to use the network, and to network together.. ie i would like to stay away from having one machine as the 'parent' or host or what-have-you.

Hope i have been a little clearer than mud, appreciate any advice you all have for me

HJ

[GeneralElectric]

Herc

A couple of things..... you CAN'T connect 2 ethernet cards together for a PC-PC connection without what's called a "crossover cable".

You CAN connect the 2 PC's with a crossover cable (it reverses the data RX/TX wires) so you don't need a network hub.

USB hubs are great, but you really don't want 2 machines sharing the same hub. It's to do with the way that the host PC allocates resources to the devices on the USB chain.

Maybe the best solution is to network the machines together, and have share your printers / scanners etc where appropriate.

1) Get the crossover cable and connect the 2 ethernet cards together. (or if you can't get one then just buy a small 2-4 port ethernet hub from PC World).

2) Go into the network settings (control panel > network) and click TCP/IP for your network cards. If you haven't installed TCP/IP now is a good time to do it! You will also need "file and printer sharing" installed.

3) On each PC give yourself a different IP address and enter that under the IP address section. I would use 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 .

4) Just under the IP address section enter the subnet mask which in this case is 255.255.255.0. No need to enter a default gateway.

5) Click OK, and restart.

6) Make sure each machine has a different host name ( ie call one machine Herc and the other Mary or whatever!). You can change this name by right-clicking on My Computer and then selecting Properties. Then click "Network Identification" then "properties". You can input a new host name there.

You may need to restart your machines again at this point.

Then you can start sharing things. Right click your C drive in My computer, then click "sharing". Click New Share, give it a name (eg Herc's C drive). Then if you click "permissions" you will see who has permission to use it. It'll possibly be set to everyone, full control. You might just want to take that off and just put your own username in the box with full control. You do a similar thing with the other PC.

If you OK all of this, you can then (hopefully) see each other's PC's in "My Network Places" on the desktop. You have to be logged in as the user that you gave full access permission to, if not, make sure you enter it into the "connect as" box.

Same sort of thing goes with your printer etc.

It's not quite so easy with WRITE access to a CDRW, but sharing one for reading is easy. Just find it in My Computer, then right click and share again.

Hope this helps,

GE

[GeneralElectric]

Oh, I almost forgot - if you've got USB ports on both PC's, you can connect them directly with a certain USB cable. It's got a bit of built in gadgetry that makes it behave like a network connection between 2 PC's. If I can remember where I saw it I'll give you a shout. Might be a little easier than the ethernet connection I mentioned above.

Cheers

[GeneralElectric]

Found this article - it's a great overview of Direct cable connections and Windows networking in general:

http://www.wown.info/j_helmig/dccmain.htm

Cheers

[stagger]

jj250873 is right - an ethernet RJ45 To RJ45 crossover cable. Cheap, simple and very fast. Much much faster and more convenient than DCC if you already have two ethernet cards. Much better for sharing resources such as printers too.

You should be able to get a short crossover cable for about £5. Be warned though - many high street retailers haven't got a clue - I bought a cable that I was assured was a crossover version - it wasn't.

Look for X/OVER or CROSSOVER stamped on the cable itself.

[Herc Jerk]

Thanks for your quick replies

Stagger: will be careful and be sure of exactly what i need before i go off shopping

jj: thanks a bunch for your words of explanation- have copied them down and also had a quick look through that link- excellent stuff there, reminding me again of how much there is to learn with these things but i will enjoy getting stuck in... just en la manyana, with a fresh brain!! Appreciate your time.

HJ

[Herc Jerk]

Networking seems to have worked OK- with you help of course, crew.

Trouble is now when i boot up i get a message that my "paging file" is too small... tells me to right click my computer and etc and change it to a higher value... do so and have to restart then and i get the same message and problem. Is this a related problem- have i screwed something somewhere? Looks like this page file is supposed to be ~380mb and mine is stuck at 20mb. This happens on or off my "network".

Also, curious questions- there was a whole bundle of user names and groups listed... even one called "ANONYMOUS LOGON"... now this is a newly installed OS and no-one else uses my machine except for when i am online and then i use the Zone Alarm fire wall- Is anyone in my computer or are there entries for the OS to do its job?

Thanks again

HJ

[GeneralElectric]

Hi Herc

Well done with the networking!

OK, you DO need to give yourself a larger page file - it's quite possible that it has reset itself somehow.

A good rule of thumb for these things is to set the page file to approx 2 x the amount of system memory. In your case, that's half a gig or 512MB.

Just set the Minimum and Maximum values to 512MB and apply the changes.

Windows 2000 is a multiuser system - you can run it as a server. That's why you can see "anonymous" and "guest" logins. You can safely delete these if you're only using the machine as a PC.

It's good practice to delete unused user accounts from any system, these all represent a security risk.

If you've got ZoneAlarm you're protected from lots of nasties anyway, so you sound like you've got things nicely under control.

You may want to get the latest Windows 2000 service pack from Microsoft which corrects a number of bugs / security problems. Takes a while to download, but it's always worth it for peace of mind.

Hope this helps mate

JJ

[Herc Jerk]

Thanks again jj, have to put you on the pay roll soon!

Will try setting both the initial and max sizes to 512mb...

Just on the user names- there are a few that are like "IMUSR_Herc" type, and it said these account are for system programs to access other programs. Not the correct wording but i figure you will get my drift. Is this OK? Or will i delete these also and be OK. Personally i don't want any "users" in there that i haven't put in, but if i need them for the OS to work then I'll relax...

Time for dinner here...

HJ

[GeneralElectric]

Hi Herc

To be honest, you really should only have an administrator account and possibly a couple of users you've added yourself.

If there are accounts prefixed with "IUSR_" these are for IIS webserver. Since you are apparently not using IIS (which is fair enough, it's your PC not a webserver!) then you can disregard and delete them.

I really wouldn't worry a great deal about them though.

You have ZoneAlarm protecting you from people trying to access the server capabilities of your system, so provided you've got that set up and working alright you will get a warning from it if you have unauthorized login attempts from the Internet.

It's also good practice to shutdown any server processes that aren't needed - have a look at your Services (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services) and shutdown IIS and any other "obviously not needed" services. Best done with care though - but look for IIS / Personal Web server and things like that.

Enjoy your dinner:D

JJ

[Herc Jerk]

Thanks Mate, dinner was good:D

It looks like i am getting conflicting information- RHS click on My Computer>properties>performance>advanced shows me i have 20MB virtual memory. Changed it and restarted and same warning... BUT under Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management it shows Total Virtual Mem~520MB and Page File Space ~260MB.

BUT my Norton System Doctor which i have sitting in the bottom LHS of my screen (and has a "Low" Base Priority as a process in Task Manager as SYSDOC32.exe), is still showing "busy" on 5 out of the 8 sensors that i use on it. Leads me to figure that something is still amiss as this will probably be a good indication of things back to normal as it will get allocated resources last... yes/no/maybe?

JJ tell me, could this be one of those problems that i could chase my tail around about for ever and a day and find eventually that i have to live with it or re-install? If so, i would prefer to get on with it and re-install now, only because i am a meathead and installed this win2K, THEN checked the HP update sight and found that there is a BIOS update specifically for win2K on the HP4150 but it is supposed to be installed BEFORE win2K :rolleyes:

BTW as you mentioned the IIS server, i went into cntrl panel>add/remove programs>windows and uninstalled the IIS business, then deleted the offending user accounts except for as you said. Much more pleasing to behold!

Also have done the windows updates- at least a whole bundle of them (critical etc) will trundle off now and see if and what it says more for me to do.

About lunch time for you now isn't it mate?

HJ

[Herc Jerk]

Thanks Mate, dinner was good:D

It looks like i am getting conflicting information- RHS click on My Computer>properties>performance>advanced shows me i have 20MB virtual memory. Changed it and restarted and same warning... BUT under Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management it shows Total Virtual Mem~520MB and Page File Space ~260MB.

BUT my Norton System Doctor which i have sitting in the bottom LHS of my screen (and has a "Low" Base Priority as a process in Task Manager as SYSDOC32.exe), is still showing "busy" on 5 out of the 8 sensors that i use on it. Leads me to figure that something is still amiss as this will probably be a good indication of things back to normal as it will get allocated resources last... yes/no/maybe?

JJ tell me, could this be one of those problems that i could chase my tail around about for ever and a day and find eventually that i have to live with it or re-install? If so, i would prefer to get on with it and re-install now, only because i am a meathead and installed this win2K, THEN checked the HP update sight and found that there is a BIOS update specifically for win2K on the HP4150 but it is supposed to be installed BEFORE win2K :rolleyes:

BTW as you mentioned the IIS server, i went into cntrl panel>add/remove programs>windows and uninstalled the IIS business, then deleted the offending user accounts except for as you said. Much more pleasing to behold!

Also have done the windows updates- at least a whole bundle of them (critical etc) will trundle off now and see if and what it says more for me to do.

About lunch time for you now isn't it mate?

HJ

[GeneralElectric]

Hi Herc

Haven't quite made it to the sandwich shop yet - seriously hungry though! I:D

Possibly something is amiss...... can you right-click the taskbar and get the Task Manager?

You should see the "commit charge" box. This gives you a vague idea of the virtual memory available / used in your page file.

If you go through the "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management " thingy you will see that it calculates Total Virtual Memory as Total Physical Memory + Page File Space.

If your page file space is screwed (now you should have > 700MB total virtual and you don't) then you need to recreate the page file.

Check this article:

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q140472

It says the cause is:

Windows is not able to correctly gain access to (or open with proper permissions) the Pagefile.sys file. If the partition is NTFS, it may be because the permissions are not set up correctly. By default, Windows sets up the root directory to give everyone full rights. When this right is changed, you may see the error message because the System may not have proper access to Pagefile.sys. This can happen when Administrators try to limit access to the drive on which Windows is installed. The System must have access to read the directory. If the System does not have permission to read the directory, it will not be able to access the file even if the System has full access rights on the file itself.

And the resolution is:

The best solution is to add the user System with full access to the root directory. By default, File Manager will update all the files in whatever directory that is being modified to give them the same permissions, so it will give the System full access to the directory and the Pagefile.sys file.

Usually this is good because you would expect all the files in that directory to have the same permission. But if you try to set the directory to have fewer permissions than a file in that directory has, at some time in the future, you may accidentally overwrite those broader permissions with the lesser directory permissions. This can happen by simply viewing the permissions for the directory and clicking the OK button. As stated above, the default setting is to replace permissions on files in the directory, so this replaces the greater permissions; in this case, it gives the System Read access on the directory but Full access on the Pagefile.sys file itself.

Here's the registry workaround:

To work around this, you can edit the registry. However, this can be dangerous.

WARNING: Using the Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious, system- wide problems that may require you to reinstall Windows NT to correct them. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the use of the Registry Editor can be solved. Use this tool at your own risk.

Locate or create a directory for the Pagefile.sys file. This could be the Winnt directory, which by default should have System Full access.


Make sure that this directory has System Full access and that all previous directories including the root have at least System Read access.


Start Regedt32. Select the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE on Local Machine subtree, and search for the following subkey:

SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management


On the right side of the window, choose the PagingFiles :REG_MULTI_SZ: value.


Either double-click it, or from the Edit menu, choose Multi String.


Edit the string, and insert the full path for where you would like the Pagefile.sys file to reside. For example, change C:\Pagefile.sys 44 100 to C:\Winnt\Pagefile.sys 44 100. (Here 44 refers to the minimum pagefile size and 100 the maximum.)


Exit Regedt32.


Restart the computer, and check to make sure Pagefile.sys appears in the correct location. Then delete the Pagefile.sys file in the root directory as this file is no longer be used.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Confused - you will be!!!

I had this very message myself last year after I reinstalled a system - managed to solve with the above article.

If you can be arsed then by all means do a reinstall, sounds like you may need to if that BIOS update requires it.

Anyway - I'm off to get a sarny now, best of luck mate! ;)

Cheers

JJ

[Herc Jerk]

JJ- you're a bloody legend mate. Looks like i have changed the permissions in my blundering around, much like a bull in a china closet...

You're right too, that registry stuff does confuse me, and scares me!. Figure what i will do now is do a full back up- need to anyway- and then try and follow your instructions. Will be a big learning for me, and if i produce a large clusterf_ck at least i will be prepared to reinstall.

One last question before i head off into new territory... for my machine, what should i set as the minimum and maximum Pg File size (as the article says- 44 100 - their eg is an older machine right?)? Say 100 700, or more?

BTW commit charge right now is Total ~122MB, Limit ~260MB and Peak says ~168MB. So well under what it should be, just like you said.

Enjoy your sanga mate. I'd better get on with this, things seems to be hanging and starting to get worse. Will let you know

[GeneralElectric]

Hi Herc

Much better now I've eaten!

Just quickly - Page file size should be approx twice the size of the total physical memory.

Your box has 256MB RAM on board, so 2 X 256 = 512MB. That should do the trick nicely. You can simply fix the initial and Max size to about 520.

Make sure you back up your docs etc BEFORE you tweak the registry.... and if you follow the instructions to the letter you'll be just fine.

Good luck mate, and type carefully! :eek::)

JJ

[Herc Jerk]

G'day jj,

Thanks for all your help mate. I think i made a mess of that registry edit as i couldn't find the key at first, but found it somewhere else... and ahh, think i may have changed too many settings in different sub-trees... and ahh, i had no idea what that stuff meant... but hey i had fun:)

When i realized i wasn't fixing anything, i installed the new BIOS and then she wouldn't boot (had already backed up in case) so i went and reinstalled.

Now shes fresh as a daisy and i spent all day yesterday downloading the w2k updates. One day i will get cable....

Thanks again mate, really appreciate your time and good advice!

HJ

[GeneralElectric]

Morning old chap

Hey no problem, at least you've had a "crash" course in Windows networking now!

Take it easy

J

[FLEX42]

Hey you guys, just read this thread with interest as I'm going to hook up my new laptop to the old pc.

It's just so refreshing to see so much help and advice forthcoming. And HJ you're right, JJ.......you're an absolute star, now I know who to ask when I get stuck . Cheerio;)

[GeneralElectric]

Hi Flex

Glad it is of interest - networking Windows / Unix is my field of work and it's not nearly so difficult to understand as most people think.

If you need a shove in the right direction, keep this thread alive and I'll try and help!:)

Take it easy

JJ