How to - Connecting 2 Computers Together

Connecting 2 computers together is usually required for several reasons

• A way to share an internet connection

• To copy files from an old computer to new

• A way to share files

There are several ways to connect computers together

Using a router is perhaps the easiest way – if you have 2 computers that access the same Internet connection then they are both in effect on the same network already, on one of the computer simply enable network sharing or simple network sharingmore here ..

An Ethernet network crossover cable can be plugged into the network port of each computer, now you in effect have an connection between the two, but before any data can be transferred each needs to be given a static IP address – to do this go to the network section in Windows Control Panel – manage network connection – double click the network connection you are using to connect the 2 computers – then click on TCPIP or TCPIP/IPv4 – select Use the following IP address – and use something similar to 192.168.0.6 – Note you need to set this on each computer and the last digit must be different to the other computer for example 192.168.0.5

Adhoc network – to use this both computers must have wireless network cards, this type of connection is usually used to share an Internet connection, for more on this check here..

Once you have the network connection in place there are 2 ways to access the information on the other computer – the first is to select Network from the Start Menu – from this you should see the computer that has sharing enabled as above.

The second way is to enter the computer name or IP address in the following way.
\\computer name or \\IP ADDRESS

If you have chosen to use the simple file sharing method you will need to copy any files into the shared folder before you can access them.

The Administrator share
If you have or setup a login account on the other computer it can be accessed using what is commonly called the administrator share for example..

If we have a computer called computer-adviser and we have setup a login account with administrator rights called mike we can access it from the other computer using the following

\\computer-adviser \c$ this will then give a username and password prompt

We then need to enter the login information using the following format

Computer name\user account
Computer-adviser\mike and then the password

If you have any problems connecting 2 computers then the problem will most likely be with your Windows firewall on the computer you are connecting to blocking the port you are connecting to – a simple way to confirm this is to disable the firewall for a few minutes – if sharing now works then you can either leave the firewall off, which is not recommended or allow file sharing within the firewalls settings.

For more on file sharing when connecting 2 computers read here …

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Computer adviser connecting 2 computers article