Two new locations showing in Network?

eknirb said:

we have two PCs connected to a router. how could this happen?

So your desktop PC's are connected to WHAT router? Who is your ISP? What is the equipment (brand/model)?

And are your two desktops connected via ethernet cable to the router, or wirelessly?

U mean those two PCs copied everything in my PC?

Not necessarily. But they were obviously present on your network, and thus COULD have had access to the contents of your two desktops.

But this would only have been "possibly easy" if you don't use Windows passwords for the "user" on your desktop PC's. You should ALWAYS have a password required at the Windows "Welcome" screen to log in as a user. This is just one more level of protection making it more difficult (if not impossible) for someone to gain unrestricted access to your computer. If they can't get past that "Windows front door password" then they are certainly stymied.

In addition to the Windows password which would be required for any remote PC (wired or wireless) to be able to gain generic access to one of your desktops, you can also further allow or restrict access to the contents of specific drives/folders/files on those machines. So you can construct a combination of security for your "home network" to whatever degree of free-access or restrictions that you desire.

But for absolute sure, you SHOULD be using Windows password to sign on to Windows at the Welcome screen for any user(s) defined on that machine. Then any other machine on the network (authorized or "rogue") couldn't get past that front door without at least providing the proper Windows password to even just connect.

I also don't think that our router is "locked down" or whatever it is called.

You absolutely should NOT have "none" specified for wireless security.

As I showed in my latest screenshot, you should specify WPA2-PSK security to gain wireless access through your wireless router, and you then must provide a passphrase (i.e. password). Your own wireless devices or laptop/phone would then require that you enter that password in order to "connect" wirelessly.

Our two PCs are connected to a Netgear Rangemax router, and our ISP is AT&T/Yahoo DSL. My PC is always on- what good would the password at welcome do?

eknirb said:

It is a 824WPN v3 Netgear Rangemax Wireless Router. I don't know much about the router- it's my wife's area of expertise.

This is an older Netgear wired/wireless router.

Does not support more current 802.11n wireless speed. But it does support the older 802.11b/g speeds.

And it also contains four wired ports, of the 10/100 "fast ethernet" speeds. This is not a "gigabit" router providing 10/100/1000 speeds.

Anyway, there is still some configuration and setup possible with the router, and it's certainly possible (although not recommended, as I've tried to emphasize) to TURN OFF WIRELESS SECURITY.

You (or your wife) should get into the router (default IP address is 192.168.1.1, from a browser like Firefox, IE, Chrome, etc.). Default Netgear userid is "admin", and default password is "password".

Here is the user manual PDF for the router.

Looks like from page 3-3 of the manual that the DEFAULT setting for wireless "WEP Security" is "DISABLED"!! Shame on Netgear for that. But also "shame on your wife" for allowing this to be how your home network was configured.

Anyway, you obviously need to reconfigure to activate wireless security. Refer to the manual.

eknirb said:

Our two PCs are connected to a Netgear Rangemax router, and our ISP is AT&T/Yahoo DSL. My PC is always on- what good would the password at welcome do?

The password is required when another PC wants to get to the folders/files on your primary PC. It's just like the other PC has to go through the "Welcome" screen Windows signon.

Installing a password for the user(s) defined on each Windows PC (which is then required to be entered any time you re-boot the machine, at the Welcome screen), is the absolute minimum requirement for Windows to then be able to provide further higher levels of security to allow or prevent access. You might have "top secret" files on your PC that you don't want to allow anybody else to access (even with READ) from a "remotely connected computer" on your home LAN network, even though other folders/files might be viewed as "general purpose" and "fully available for read/write/delete/rename/update".

This is only possible if you use passwords.

But this discussion is about Windows passwords. What seems to be the case for you regarding those two "network visitors" was that they appear to have gotten onto your home network wirelessly via the 824WPN router because the router did not have wireless security properly configured, but rather had it DISABLED (so that no password was required).

It is the router configuration and wireless security that MUST be fixed right now. This will prevent any wireless intruders in the future from gaining access to your home LAN and its two desktop machines.

Could the AT&T guy next door have anything to do with it? Working on Internet or something?

eknirb said:

Could the AT&T guy next door have anything to do with it? Working on Internet or something?

Could be. They might be carrying wireless laptops and other devices. But the fact that they were actually ON YOUR NETWORK says they weren't just "detected" for allowing possible wireless connection from your PC to them. They had actually GOTTEN ONTO YOUR NETWORK. Takes a conscious action by the "intruder" to make that happen.

So again, the point is you MUST look inside your router, to see what the current wireless security configuration is. If it's currently DISABLED then you must ENABLE it (WPA2-PSK), and set a password.

And if wireless security is already currently ENABLED, then you have to assume the password was "guessed at" or hacked, and you absolutely MUST CHANGE THE WIRELESS PASSPHRASE!

If your wife is home and is "in charge of the router", please drag her over to the computer. The default address of the router should be 192.168.1.1, but it might have gotten changed by the ATT installers. If you go into a DOS command prompt and enter IPCONFIG, you will be able to see the router's address as the "default gateway" as well as your own PC's DHCP-assigned address (i.e. assigned by the router).

I went and found him--he said he was working on clients Net, and he was in fact on a wireless tablet thing.