Very Frustrated NooB Questions

I have been trying to network my laptop and desktop for days now, with
varying degrees of failure. I can't believe that in this day and age,
Windows is still so bloody stupid that you can't just connect two PCs and
tell them 'Harry, this is John. John, this is Harry. Please share
everything with each other but nothing with anyone else.''

Is that too much to ask ?

Anyway, on with my dumb questions :

Does anyone have a link to a simple and comprehensive guide to networking
two computers ? One XP Home the other XP Pro. What I want to do is have the
laptop carry a subset of the documents and files on my desktop, preferably
synchronising by wireless whenever I ask them to. So far I have managed
this temporarily by using a firewire cable (using 'firenet'') AND ethernet
cable (no idea why, but it worked with them both but not with only 1 of
them), and I managed to set up a wireless network but couldn't get the PCs
to see each others' shared directories. I then went back to LAN (without
the firewire cable) and found that it worked - but not after I switched off
the wireless access point (I did this because I had to drop my firewalls in
order to get the PCs to see each others'files). Now why would a LAN
connection stop working because a wireless access point is switched off ?

Can I get my two PCs to synch files effectively while maintaining firewalls
to the internet ?

Any help VERY gratefully received

Cheers

Blewyn

See these 2 sites for some very good tutorials and troubleshooting
information.
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/ and http://www.ezlan.net/
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"Blewyn" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I have been trying to network my laptop and desktop for days now, with
>varying degrees of failure. I can't believe that in this day and age,
>Windows is still so bloody stupid that you can't just connect two PCs and
>tell them 'Harry, this is John. John, this is Harry. Please share
>everything with each other but nothing with anyone else.''
>
> Is that too much to ask ?
>
> Anyway, on with my dumb questions :
>
> Does anyone have a link to a simple and comprehensive guide to networking
> two computers ? One XP Home the other XP Pro. What I want to do is have
> the laptop carry a subset of the documents and files on my desktop,
> preferably synchronising by wireless whenever I ask them to. So far I
> have managed this temporarily by using a firewire cable (using 'firenet'')
> AND ethernet cable (no idea why, but it worked with them both but not with
> only 1 of them), and I managed to set up a wireless network but couldn't
> get the PCs to see each others' shared directories. I then went back to
> LAN (without the firewire cable) and found that it worked - but not after
> I switched off the wireless access point (I did this because I had to drop
> my firewalls in order to get the PCs to see each others'files). Now why
> would a LAN connection stop working because a wireless access point is
> switched off ?
>
> Can I get my two PCs to synch files effectively while maintaining
> firewalls to the internet ?
>
> Any help VERY gratefully received
>
> Cheers
>
> Blewyn
>