beansfeast Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 Hi I've been searching for topics that might help me with the problems I'm having but nothing seems to fit quite right! I have recently got a Packard Bell laptop and intend to use it generally at home as a secondary internet access, email and general usage alongside my home PC. I have a '3Com OfficeConnect Wireless 11g Cable/DSL Router' to which I can connect my laptop to the internet, access emails etc by using a 3com wireless dongle. What I want to do is be able to access all the files on my pc in the same way, but can't seem to get them communicating together. I firstly tried using VPN but was told this was a long winded way that was pointless, and to use a network card. But is there any other way I can do this, perhaps by using WDS? I'm not a hugely technical person so am really not sure on the best way forwards at the mo, plus the router and 3com help files generally go straight over my head with the technical talk! Please help!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 Can your PC see the router and can the laptop see the router? If you make sure you use DHCP on both connections for the IP then that makes sure they're both on the same network, enable netbios on both machines and make sure they're both part of the same workgroup. Also make sure you've setup file and printer sharing on both machines Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beansfeast Posted October 5, 2006 Author Share Posted October 5, 2006 Thanks for that, sounds stupidly easy! bet it won't be though, lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beansfeast Posted October 6, 2006 Author Share Posted October 6, 2006 Thanks for the help above probedb, worked a treat!! My laptop can now see and change the files on my PC, had a bit of a nightmare trying to work out how to get around the firewall but worked it out in the end! However, my PC can't access any files on my laptop. I've tried everything I can think of, the PC just can't find my laptop on the network. Any ideas? Also, I tried looking at photo's on my laptop that are stored on my pc but it took ages to open them up to full screen size as a slideshow. Is this just down to the laptops processing power, or could something else be slowing it down? The laptop is pretty quick at producing a display of thumbnails in a folder from my pc, so I would have thought a slideshow wouldn't be too much slower. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 it's down to the network speed, photos can be 5 - 10 mb in size, even on a 11g network these will take several seconds to transfer at optimum speed. If your signal is weak for one of the pc's then it could take 10 - 15 seconds to transfer the data. Seems a bit basic, but on the laptop have you set the folders you want to see from the desktop to be shared. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beansfeast Posted October 6, 2006 Author Share Posted October 6, 2006 it's down to the network speed, photos can be 5 - 10 mb in size, even on a 11g network these will take several seconds to transfer at optimum speed. If your signal is weak for one of the pc's then it could take 10 - 15 seconds to transfer the data. Seems a bit basic, but on the laptop have you set the folders you want to see from the desktop to be shared. So depending on where the router is positioned, could make quite a bit of difference in the speed at which the laptop can access files/photo's etc? I say this because at the moment it is located on top of the main pc base unit in a cupboard! On the laptop I have set all the folders I want as shared, I followed your first reply on this thread whilst having the pc and laptop side by side and doing exactly the same things on both of them. The only thing that seemed to be a bit weird was after shutting down the pc and rebooting, I couldn't access it from the laptop again until I had redone all the firewall exceptions for it. Is there some way I should be saving the firewall settings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 What firewall are you using? Yes, the router position (and where you are in relation to it) will affect the speed of your file transfers. Is it still the case that the desktop cannot see the laptop folders? Or is that resolved now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beansfeast Posted October 6, 2006 Author Share Posted October 6, 2006 What firewall are you using? Yes, the router position (and where you are in relation to it) will affect the speed of your file transfers. Is it still the case that the desktop cannot see the laptop folders? Or is that resolved now? I am using the XP firewalls, both PC and laptop have XP. I suspect by moving the router out of the cupboard and somewhere higher up will probably improve performance then! The desktop still can't see the laptop, I'll have to go through the settings again and see if I've missed something out - the most likely answer! I'm also at work so won't be doing this till tonight or over the weekend... Thanks for the help guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted October 6, 2006 Share Posted October 6, 2006 It might be worth replacing the windows firewall with something like zoneAlarm, it's more secure and more easily configurable. Chances are that the laptop is blocking the filesharing protocol when it's an incoming request. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beansfeast Posted October 6, 2006 Author Share Posted October 6, 2006 It might be worth replacing the windows firewall with something like zoneAlarm, it's more secure and more easily configurable. Chances are that the laptop is blocking the filesharing protocol when it's an incoming request. When you say the laptop is blocking, do you mean the firewall? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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