Sharing a printer and drive space can reduce costs on your home network. In our example home, we share a main home office printer as well as storage space on the drive. The shared storage space is used to store video, photographs, music files and more, used by all the PCs in the home. This example assumes that the computers are on a home network with TCPIP installed (an example would be multiple computers, presently sharing the Internet access). |
Let's look at the PC that has the Printer and Drive to Share
 On the home office computer, running Windows XP home edition, the workgroup was named "HOMENET". This is done by selecting the "System properties" in the control panel, under the tab "Computer Name". The screenshot below shows this tab. The computer name is "Mainoffice". All home network computers should have a unique computer name but have the same workgroup name. |
Sharing the Printer
From the "Printers and Faxes" folder in the control panel, under the properties for the connected printer, the sharing tab was chosen. The screenshot below shows this tab. "Share this printer" is selected and the name "mainprinter" was chosen. |
Sharing the Drive
| I created a directory on the mainoffice computer and in "Windows Explorer", right clicked the created folder. The screenshot below shows the "Sharing and Security" tab to select. |
| The screenshot below shows the selection for "Share this folder on the network" and the Share name "homeserver" that was created. The box for "Allow users to change my files" is also selected. |
The home office computer named, "mainoffice" is now ready to share its printer and drive. Other home network PCs that have a unique name and are set to the workgroup "HOMENET" will now be able to browse to and use these resources. |
Let's look at a PC that will Share the Printer
| The screenshot below shows the "Add Pinter Wizard" on a laptop running "Windows XP". "A network printer is selected. |
The screenshot below shows that "Connect to this printer" is selected. The format for the name is two backslashes-"computername"-single backslash-"printername". Shown as: \\mainoffice\mainprinter
You could browse for the printer instead.
You may be requested to insert the CD for the printer software. |
| The screenshot below shows that the printer from "MAINOFFICE" is available. The checkmark means that it is set as the default printer. |
Let's look at Another PC that will Browse to the Drive
| The screenshot below shows the "Identification" tab of a desktop running "Windows ME". This can be found under "network" in the "control panel". The computer name is unique and the workgroup is set to "homenet". The computer description is an optional field. Restart the computer. |
| The screenshot below shows the "Entire Network" folder in "Network Neighborhood" The workgroup "homenet" is shown left and it's contents shown right. The "Mainoffice" PC is visible. |
| The screenshot below shows the resources available from the "Mainoffice" PC. The shared drive, "homeserver" and the printer "mainprinter" are shown. |
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Printer And File Sharing 