Home Network with XP Home Edition

I asked our network admin from work if he would help me connect my two computers at home.

One is a XP Home Edition and the other is XP Proferssional. I have a netgear router hooked to the computer. The router is hooked to the cable modem. I want to share files between them and be able to get to the printer from both. He offer a few settings to look at. I ended up using only two tips to get this accomplished.

- Put both machines in the same workgroup. I think this is what allowed them to ping each other.

At this point I could connect from the Home Edition to the Professional. I could then get to C$ after logging in as a admin user of the Pro machine. I could not however, get to the Home machine from the Pro one.

- Go through the Network Setup Wizard on the Home Edition PC. This is found at Start | All Programs | Accessories | Communications | Network Setup Wizard. See Practically Networked.

The only catch is that I have to explicitly add folders to my SharedDocs folder on the Home Edition in order for them to be available on the Pro.

I dragged the printer I wanted from Home Edition to Pro. Now I can print from the Pro machine.