Basic questions on Home network options

trinaz · 26 Mar 2010

Running Win 7 Pro & XP SP3 on my home network....NOT using Home Group. Here are a couple relatively novice questions I am curious about:

1) I have a couple printers setup and working fine...can I access and use an optical drive one one W& computer from another computer in the network...?...have one lightscribe drive in W7 system...can I use it from other computers in the house and how ?

2) Can I run some programs installed on one PC only from other PC's in the house...?..rather than install the same program on all computers in the house...I guess similar to a "go to my PC" system that's advertised out there ?

Is this what the remote computer option is on XP & W7 ?

Thanks, TR

Jonathan_King · 26 Mar 2010

There is no way to run programs from another computer unless you use remote desktop software like the built-in program or TeamViewer.

To use the built-in client, first enable it:

Attachment 63218

Then to use it, start typing remote desktop connection into the start menu and press enter.

Then enter the computer name that you want to log into.

Basic questions on Home network options-capture1.png

Note

Only the Professional and higher editions of XP and 7 support hosting a remote desktop session. If you have the home version of XP, you will be able to connect to the 7 machine, but not the other way around.

If this is the case, consider using the free alternative TeamViewer instead.

Bill2 · 26 Mar 2010

The normal way to share the optical drive would be to open Windows Explorer on the computer with the CD ROM drive and right click on the drive (eg CDROM Drive E), then select sharing from the drop down menu and share the drive. Both machines must be on the same network. This should permit access to the CDROM drive from the machine with no CDROM drive. I think it would also help to turn on file and printer sharing and perhaps also make sure that your firewall and antivirus allow the connection. You can also map the shared drive (the optical drive) to the other computer so it shows up in windows explorer though that shouldnt be necessary.
I seriously doubt you can burn a cd/dvd over the network though. The network speed would probably make it impossible and there would probably also be buffer underrun errors. An optical drive can be shared for read accesss, but how would you run a CD burning program like nero on one system while the optical drive is on another system?

CommonTater · 26 Mar 2010

trinaz said:

Running Win 7 Pro & XP SP3 on my home network....NOT using Home Group. Here are a couple relatively novice questions I am curious about:

1) I have a couple printers setup and working fine...can I access and use an optical drive one one W& computer from another computer in the network...?...have one lightscribe drive in W7 system...can I use it from other computers in the house and how ?

Bill2 has the right answer to this one... You can simply share the drive.

However... I would also check the share permissions to make sure it's set as read only... The correct setting would be to Add "Everyone" if that isn't already there and check the Read checkbox in the Advanced Sharing/Permissions dialog.

The advice that you'll not likely burn a disk over the network is probably correct, unless you have a burner that will cache the files on the target machine before burning you're going to get buffering problems.

2) Can I run some programs installed on one PC only from other PC's in the house...?..rather than install the same program on all computers in the house...I guess similar to a "go to my PC" system that's advertised out there ?

Yes you can. You will need to share the programs folder in Program Files and create a shortcut on the other machine, you will then have to create permissions for the other user(s) to execute the program... but that's entirely doable. I've set several Workgroup based offices up to have seldom used programs (Like Tweak UI, Winamp, and other simple utilities) on a central server then created shortcuts in a folder so they could access them when needed.

(It may take some fiddling with permissions, but it can be done)

Is this what the remote computer option is on XP & W7 ?

Thanks, TR

Not really. Remote Desktop is really so that you can do something on your home computer from work... I use it to do maintenance and some setup on my HTPC (which runs without Keyboard or Mouse). But it's not really intended to run full out programs... For example, trying to watch a movie that way you'd immediately run into bandwidth problems as the remote desktop and movie stream compete for network time.

One of the things I see a lot (and this may be regional...) is that people don't realize they can open any file anywhere on their network simply by clicking on it.
For example: I have a rather nifty collection of movies on a NAS box and the family watches them on their own computers all the time simply by clicking on the file(s) they want.