How to network applications

[Preti9cboi]

I have warcraft three and and world of warcraft on one computer in my house. Is it possible for me to access those programs through a different computer in my house?

I also need this to update a program on other computer when im across the house sometimes.

Would you know where i could find some instructions?

 

[Fardringle]

Some applications will allow you to simply run the executable file from any drive or network location. Others have to be physically installed on the computer you are running them from. Some times you can run the install on the local PC and point it to the files on another PC, but there's no guarantee it would work.

I don't play Warcraft so I can't say for certain whether or not it would work at all, but I can tell you for sure that you don't WANT to. Games that are very graphics intensive are constantly reading to and from the files on the hard disk, and if those files are located on a disk on a PC somewhere else on the network, you will have to wait for the file to transfer across the network every time the game needs to load a new room, zone, skin, texture, data file, etc., which would make the game run VERY slowly, if it would even work at all...

 

[yukichigai]

At work we network a number of programs from the main server. A few of them do require some trickery though. The easiest way to make sure you can run the program networked is to simply install to the network drive from each computer you want to run it on.

Example: say you have 3 computers in your house, one already with WoW on it. After backing up everything first (very important since I've not tried this with WoW or W3) and making sure the WoW and W3 folders are all shared, start an install process on each of the other computers, as though you were going to install the files locally. When it asks you the directory to install to, you select the directory "\\<host computer>\<shared folder>\<WoW or W3 folder>". (Something like "\\ElServerito\Programs\WoW") This should simply install WoW over the top of the existing installation on the host computer, but will also install any necessary registry entries or system files onto the local machine as well; it's highly unlikely this will take up any more than 5 megs of space on the local computer, barring sounds and the like.

This is, of course, assuming WoW and W3 don't have network install options. I know a few games which do. If not, try my suggested process, but back everything up first. This works for many programs, but not all.