Need help setting up home network

I have 2 desktops and 1 notebook in my house, one has Windows 98SE, one has WinXP Pro and my notebook has WinXP home. I tried setting up a network between the notebook and the desktop with WinXP pro first, I managed to connect the two using ad hoc because both of them are wireless. However, even though both of them are connected to the same network, I couldn't access the other computer. Could someone tell me how to connect the 3 computers together so I can share files and a printer?

 

You have to enable file and printer sharing. The way I do this is by opening up an explorer window (windows key + e), then right click on the HDD, choose properties, then select the sharing tab. In win98, I think this will require a password.

 

Please elaborate more on the exact connection setup on your network (or how you want to set it up), i.e: which network/wireless adapters are present on each PC, what are they connected to, do you have internet connection and do you want to share it, do you have a switch/router, what is the printer connected to.

 

All 3 of my computers are connected through a wireless router, the Win98 one is wired using an ethernet cable, the WinXP and notebook are connected using wireless. I want to setup a network so that I can share files between the WinXP computer and notebook and able to share a printer between all 3 computers.

 

Step 1:

Make sure that the connection works on the IP level. If your router's DHCP server is running, it should automatically assign IPs to all machines that connect. Alternatively, you may want to assign constant IPs.

Make sure that all your computers can see each other by IP (you can use the IPCONFIG commmand to find the IP of each PC, then use PING on the other machines to see if you can access it).

Step 2:

Make sure that all your PCs are assigned unique names and are located in the same workgroup (In XP it should be System Properties -> Computer Name). In 98 it should be somewhere around there too.

At this point it would be better to disable any firewalls (if you have them), just to make sure that the connection works. See if you can access computers from other computers via the "Network neighborhood" in Win98, and via the "My Network Places -> View Workgroup Computers" in WinXP.

Assuming this step works fine - you need to enable sharing on each folder and each printer you want to share, using the method suggested by noahsark.

 

I still couldn't get anything to work, is there a step by step guide that I could follow from the beginning?

 

Where exactly did you start having problems. Let's start with the simplest thing. Connect all three machines to the router and report their complete IP settings.

To do so:

Double click connection icon -> Support -> Details -> Copy/Paste (Might want to leave the MAC address out)

 

I got everything set up using network magic, is there any other software like that and it's free?

 

Everything is free, nothing is needed.

 

What's network magic?

There should be a setup guide that came with your router. Start there. The Win98 machine should connect automatically if it's wired. The two XP Machines will need to have thier wireless settings configured to match the router, but if you right click the icon in the lower right and choose "Show Available Wireless Networks", you should see your wireless network. Once connected to the wireless network, the PCs should be able to see each other in Network Neighborhood (as suggested, make sure they're all on the same Workgroup name). The two XP machines should be in 'Infrastructure' mode, not Ad-hoc.

-Lee