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#41
No. It shows 0, and no symbol 5 (re: my earlier post) when no wireless devices are connected.
I've had a really s**t day today, no time to SF before midnight my time, trying to solve some delivery problems (Western European air traffic still standing still, deliveries in wrong countries and airports). I'll make some tests tomorrow, will report back with results. To reproduce your issue I just want to check: the USB adapter is used by Seven or XP?
Kari
Home or Work will work as the location. For the group, you most definitely want workgroup, not homegroup. I changed my location as suggested by Iseeuu from Work to Home. I cannot tell any difference.
Basically there's only one difference: computers connected to a Work network can not join homegroup. All Windows computers must belong to a workgroup and can join the homegroup.
In Seekermeister's case homegroup is not even an option, other rig running XP, so there's no difference. My reason to recommend Home is mostly a feeling issue; when networking computers at home I like to call it Home network.
As so often, Brink has made a nice tutorial about choosing network type: Network Location - Set as Home, Work, or Public Network.
Kari
Carl;
According to this link: Choosing a network location the "Home Network" location turns "Discovery" on by default.
From a security point of view, a "home network", built around a router, exposes the home user to very little risk (unless the user chooses to configure remote access to the network from the Internet). A router is essentially a "dumb" server. If you turn off ping reply, the router won't be detected by a hacker, and even then the router holds no personal data that can be stolen. Using WAP2-PSK encryption for the wireless signal provides the most reasonable security to keep others from intercepting the signal.
In a Work environment, the Server is a computer and serves the client computers in a Domain. This difference requires different security settings to protect the user and server from compromise, as there is ample data there worth stealing. (not to me)
So by design, the Home security settings are adequate for a Home Network, the Work settings for a Work Network, and Public settings for Internet cafes and public networks and such.
Cheers!
Robert
The reason I suggested Work instead of Home is because there is less confusion between Work as a type and workgroup. It took me a while to see understand these were two different animals. And I understand that if you set Work as the location, you cannot form or join a homegroup. And he does not want to form a homegroup with his XP machine.
Thanks, Robert; I read your post after I had posted. I appreciate the explanation. I did not know what if any differences there were in security between the two. I certainly understand and agree with the security of a router.
Last edited by CarlTR6; 16 Apr 2010 at 21:09. Reason: Addid a comment
I just discovered another element is the frazzled web that I'm trying to unravel. I opened Network Connections in XP and saw that it said that the wireless connection was firewalled. Not knowing how to deal with that, except shutting the firewalls down on both computers, and then trying to connect again, I still am running into the same problems as before. I don't know that it will endure a reboot, but after restarting the firewalls, Network Connections no longer says that it is firewalled...at least in XP, but I do not know how to check that in W7.
An update.
I made some testing today, trying to reproduce your hardware setup as closely as possible (Belkin N1 Vision router, XP machine using Belkin N1 USB wireless adapter, one Seven rig hardwired to router, one Seven machine wireless, all computers in same subnet and workgroup).
I reseted my router, and re-connected Seven rigs to it. Then I installed Belkin USB adapter to an XP laptop, using latest drivers from Belkin's support site. I then disabled XP's other NIC's (LAN & WiFi) and connected it to my home workgroup, same as my Seven rigs, using the mentioned USB adapter.
Everything went smoothly, the XP found Seven shares immediately after the installation and reboot. All Seven rigs found XP shares, also without problems.
I then connected an old USB printer to XP, sharing it, and could print from Seven. Also printing from XP worked when printer was connected to a Seven rig and shared.
All computers, also the XP, were able to use a shared network media drive.
Kari
That is very good, that only leaves the question as to why it is not working for me? The only thing that I noticed in your summary that I have not done, is to install the "lastest" driver for the adapter. I had considered it, but since they didn't date the driver, or provide some means of comparison, I had no way to know whether it would be later than what came with the adapter. Since nothing else has worked, I guess that I will try it anyway, since there seems that there is nothing to lose.
EDIT: I nearly missed where you said that you used home workgroup on both computers. This is something that I have asked about several times, and nobody has given me an answer that I understood. You combine the words "home" and "work" in this statement. I have been thinking that these terms described forms of the network type...i.e. home, work, public, but "workgroup" is a term used in a different fashion...isn't it? Words, words, words, they can be very confusing at times.