Building A Home Network In Vista

Building a home network allows you to share files and printers with the other computers in your network.

*Make sure that if you have a firewall it allows home networking.

To get started, open the Control Panel and select 'Network and Internet'.

Then select 'Network and Sharing Center'.

Scroll down to the 'Sharing and Discovery' section and expand the 'Network discovery' sub-section. Select 'Turn on network discovery'. Do the same for the 'File sharing' sub-section below 'Network discovery'. You will also be presented with options to password protect your network and share printers.

Next, select the 'Start' menu and right-click on 'Computer'. From the menu select 'Properties'. Under the section 'Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings' select 'Change settings'.

A dialog will appear. Select the 'Change' button.

Type in a unique name for your computer into the 'Computer name' box. Then type a universal name for your workgroup. For instance, your computer name might be "Keith" and your workgroup "VPC".

Once finished, restart your computer. Repeat this procedure for all of the computers in your network.

*Make sure all of your computers have unique names, but reside on the same workgroup.