Set Up Your Home Network, Windows 7 Edition

[Night Hawk]

Set Up Your Home Network, Windows 7 Edition

By Zack Stern
December 31, 2009 03:50 AM ET

PC World - With Windows 7, you can more easily share files and printers across a network via the new HomeGroups feature. HomeGroups lets you connect to files and printers with a group password--if all the PCs have Windows 7. But I'll show you how to get your Windows 7 PC to play nicely on a network that also has Macs and XP/Vista PCs.

Set Up Windows 7 to Share a Printer

Windows can share a printer with other PCs on your network, so everyone in your household can connect as long as your printer and PCs are on. Here's how to set up this sharing in Windows 7.

Open Devices and Printers from the Start Menu, and double-click your printer. Pick Customize your printer, and click the Sharing tab in the following window. Select the Share this printer checkbox.

Unless you're connecting a bunch of similar PCs, I recommend skipping the option to download additional printer drivers on the host system. Just take a moment to configure everything once on each client. With different combinations of 32- and 64-bit Vista, Windows 7, and XP PCs, it's more hassle than it's worth to try to plan ahead here. Approve the options and close the Properties window.

See all 4 pages at: Set Up Your Home Network, Windows 7 Edition

 

[aem]

That's fine with the how to share, but what if the peeps can't get the machines to see each other over the net, ie they have network issue or can't connect the pcs together, who are they gonna call?

Btw, does it tell you how to do that in the article or does it assume you have already estanablished your network connectivity?