Need a tutorial for setting up printer and file sharing on multiple different OSes for the same network.

[leglez]

Ok I am needing to turn on printer and file sharing settings for all the PCs in my house.

I have the following setup:

Room #1: Windows XP Home SP2
Room #2: Windows 98 SE
Room #3: Windows 98 SE
Room #4: Windows 95

I am looking for a tutorial on how to enable Printer and File sharing, and then how to use it. I have a Linksys WRT54G router. But all the PC's are wired together with Cat5E.

 

[shamans]

what a nightmare.

you sure u don't wanna/can't upgrade all of them to Windows XP SP2?

 

[leglez]

Yea Room #1 is my room and the PC can handle Windows XP SP2, but Room #2 is an extra PC for guest's, and it has like ~100MBs of RAM and a slow CPU. Room #3 is my brothers room and it has about 64 MBs of RAM, and a slower CPU. And Room #4 is my sisters room with about 30MBs of RAM and the slowest CPU of all. And I can only afford upgrades to my computer. So I was hoping there was just some way to be able to do it like this.

 

[spidey07]

there's really nothing to it. You'll just have to use netbios over TCP or netbeui.

ezlan.net should have what you need.

 

[shamans]

lol okay. i was afraid of this.

I had to do this at some point of time too in the transition between win 98 -> win2k -> winxp and it's a little painful.

1) Basically...you have to set them all up with the SAME file/print sharing protocol (msft bundles file/print together as one):
(Can't be 100% sure but...)
You use netbeui (or netbios over netbeui). Or...
You use netbios over tcp/ip.

2) They have to be in the SAME workgroup

I don't have the exact steps remembered, so you'll have to look it up in the internet with the keywords I've provided.

I'm thinking that you're probably going to have a tough time getting all of them to see everyone else. There might be circumstances where one computer won't be able to one computer but can see others, etc.

Another way is if you could set up an ftp server in your fastest computer (your computer) since I'm guessing it'll have the most hdd space anyway. It will sort of be like a centralized server. There are downsides to this of course but hey, it really depends on your needs.

Perhaps somebody else has a better idea

May I ask, what are the specifications of your first comp?

 

[spidey07]

well if OP uses netbeui as his file sharing protocol he will have no problems at all.

they key is to make sure the server and workstation service run on one protocol and one protocol only.

 

[leglez]

The specs of my PC are:

CPU: AMD Sempron 3200+ 2.0GHz Socket 939 in a couple weeks I will upgrade to a 64 3800+ X2
HDD: 80GB, but I have a 300GB that should be here by Tueday
RAM: 1.25GBs

I don't really want to do FTP because this will mostly be for my brother and sister to transfer school documents to computer #2 so they can print them. And I think it would be complicated for them to learn how to use FTP.

Right now I am looking into upgrading the windows 95 PC to windows 98. Since it looks like windows 95 would be useless for what I need.

 

[shamans]

You could perhaps buy a printer with a network card next time you need a new printer (that has capabilities to be printed on your lan).

Good luck.

btw, ftp is not hard to learn. The interface for them is nearly identical to file sharing when using it in internet explorer.

For example, if my computer name was BobsComputer and it had an ftp server on port 21...

then I can type in ftp://BobsComputer
and it would look just like a shared folder.