"Smokey" <smokey.com> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> here's my situation. I'm running one XP machine using a cable modem and a
> linksys firewall/router. I just added another XP machine. the internet is
> working fine on both machines but I can't figure out how to network the
> two
> together. I have a lot of files to move to the new computer, and want to
> play games between the two and the easiest way would be to network. I've
> tried running the home network wizard on both computers but had no luck.
> the
> router recognizes both machines, but I'm obviously missing something. any
> help would be greatly appreciated!
If you're set on using the network to do this, make sure that the cards on
both systems have IPX/SPX also installed in their properties. Frequently I
find that this is the only way to get Windows machines to actually see each
other (given that they are on the same workgroup). IPX/SPX and netbios are
not installed by default.
Once these are installed, you may have to also do a Windows search for the
other machine. (start, search, computers or people, a computer on the
network, then * to specify all computers, or the known name) .
Be sure that you did turn on file sharing and that you marked the drives
and/or folders as shared with appropriate rights, AND that there are
appopriately matching accounts on both machines.
Bear in mind that while this works well, if there's a lot of data it can
take hours. When I do this, which is regularly, I use a shareware program
called FileSync (
www.fileware.co.uk) to move and compare files. It's
vastly superior to the stock Windows copy functions, which use the "give up
and close" model of error response. FileSync continues on error and
creates and presents a list of errors it encounters and files it can't copy.
It will also do binary comparisons, so you can be sure that critical data
files *are* identical on the two machines.
Also, if you're in a hurry, simply move the drive from the old machine and
temporarily mount it in the new one, or attach it to a USB2 drive box.
This can provide a speed increase of about 4x (for USB2) over 100mb
networking (and consequent time decrease).
There is a caveat to moving files with this method. In some circumstances,
mostly when XP Pro is in use and files have been marked private or have been
encrypted, you may not get access to the files or may be unable to decode
them. If it is XP Pro and encryption was invoked, you must, on the
original account on the original machine, export the account credentials and
import them on the new one. Simply moving the files to an account with
the same name and password will *not* work.
You must also keep a backup of the credentials somewhere very safe, because
that backup can represent your *only* way to regain access to the contents
of those files should the machine suffer damage.
MS did a pretty good job at making it easy to set up fairly robust privacy
with XP encryption, but I'm not sure that they did as good a job with making
it as clear as it should be that this particular backup is extremely
important.
HTH
-pk
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