Share files, folders, and media so they can be viewed and edited from any computer on the network. One of the main problems with multiple-computer households is duplicate data. Junior creates a movie of his garage band and tweaks it on his computer in Movie Maker 2, then saves it. He then sends the data to a shared folder for all of his family members to see, but does not delete it from its original location. This happens with family photos too, especially vacation pictures.
Everyone has a digital camera, has pictures stored on their own hard drive, and has spread multiple copies all around. This problem is also common with attachments received via e-mail. Instead of saving the funny picture of the dog in the dress to the hard drive in a shared location, the picture is forwarded via e-mail to everyone. It’s then on everyone’s hard drive instead of in a single, shared location.
Because of the massive amount of duplicate data on most home networks, it’s best to take control right away, creating shared folders on each computer or learning how to access the default ones, and put all data to be shared in it. The first step is to create a folder on the host computer that you will use to share data with everyone on the network :
- Right-click an empty area of the Desktop, point to New, and click Folder. Name the folder.
- Right-click the folder and choose Sharing And Security. You’ll see the folder’s Properties dialog box.
- The Properties dialog box shown in Figure 8-9 is the one you’ll see if you have Windows XP Professional and have Simple File Sharing disabled. If that’s the case, check Share This Folder On The Network, and click OK. If you see what’s shown in Figure 8-10, you’re either using Windows XP Home Edition or using Windows XP Professional with Simple File Sharing enabled. If that’s the case, select Share This Folder.
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Move what you want to share into this folder.
At each of the networked computers, create a link to this folder (all files stored here by you on your computer can be accessed by anyone on the network) :
- Click Start | Control Panel and, if in Category view, select Network And Internet Connections. Select My Network Places. If in Classic view, select My Network Places in the Other Places pane.
- In the Network Tasks pane, select Add A Network Place. Click Next to start the wizard.
- When prompted, select Choose Another Network Location, and click Next.
- In the Add Network Place Wizard, click Browse.
- In the Browse For Folder dialog box, expand Entire Network | Microsoft Windows Network. Locate your workgroup name and expand that, and then select the computer that holds the shared folder. Click OK.
- Click Next, type a name for the new network place, and click Finish. The file can now be accessed on
the networked computer. - Repeat these steps for each computer on the network, allowing each user to create one shared folder, and the others to connect to it using the Add Network Place Wizard.
Windows XP comes with shared folders already created, too. To find those, right-click Start, choose Explore All Users, expand Documents And Settings under the Local Disk, expand All Users, and select Shared Documents. Share this folder, and others only need to link to this folder to have access to items you put there.