W2K / LAN at work...cable modem at home...how do you do this?

[SlickVic]

Ok, here we go...

I have someone in a small office who uses his laptop (W2K Professional) at work (through a LAN, static IP) for e-mail (Outlook 2000), and internet (IE 5.01)...no problem.

He used to use a dial-up modem at home to get to the internet...no problem.

Now, he took his laptop home, and @home set him up with a new cable modem...no problem...works great.


THE PROBLEM...when he got back to the office, and hooked up to the LAN...no internet, missing icons, no shares...I'm pretty sure the problem is the IP, etc. set-up, but the question is...

How do set this up in W2K so he can access the LAN, etc., at work, then go home and use his cable modem?

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[GreenBeret]

Could create two different profiles for his computer one for home and one for work. Control panel/users

 

[SlickVic]

Thanks GreenBeret.

Could you give me a little more detail...I'm not real experienced at this

Thanks.

 

[SlickVic]

Anyone?

 

[GreenBeret]

I'm assuming he doesn't need to log onto the work LAN, he just needs his IPs set up correctly. Give me a minute or two, and I'll see what I can do for detail. I've got some problems I'm trying to work out on my netowrk.

 

[SlickVic]

Thanks...just let me know ( when you got time)..

I'm assuming he doesn't need to log onto the work LAN.

Not from home, no...he just wants to be able to go home, plug in, and get on the internet...when he goes to work, he needs to be able to hook up on the LAN for internet, e-mail, etc.


Appreciate your time.

 

[cavingjan]

You could also try a program like Netswitcher or Symantec's Mobile Essentials. I believe both of those programs come in W2K varients.

 

[lumberg]

Try creating another user on his laptop. START>SETTINGS>CONTROL PANEL>USERS AND PASSWORDS. One for work, one for home. Each of them can have their own connection settings, and things can be kept seperate. If both profiles need to access the same files he'll have to copy them to the hard drive with the proper permissions. Networking with win2000 has to be the easiest system on the planet. Mine required no configuration, I just plugged it in and it worked first time.
The static IP will be your biggest problem, does the @home cable have a static IP also?

 

[lumberg]

Bummer, I just tried my suggestion, and it didn't work. The ethernet adapter has a global configuration it seems. The changes I made in one profile affected all the others too.

Sorry, I have no other ideas. DHCP will be your best bet, or the user will have to change the IP address everytime manually. If there's a way to change it through the command prompt, you may be able to write two different batch files to change the settings.

 

[SlickVic]

Thanks for your input all...but this sucks:Q

As huge and cash rich as Microso?t is, you think they would have come up with something for this, instead of having to buy a 3rd party program.:disgust:

Thanks again.

 

[SlickVic]

Hey cavingjan, thanks...looks like that NetSwitcher program may be the answer...will update this thread if so...it's only 9 bucks:Q

 

[cavingjan]

Glad to here it. I've never used it personally. This came up about two days ago in another thread in this forum. I have used the demo version of Mobile Essentials and got rid of it. It was changing the TCP settigns for the modem too and that was causign problems. I've since installed a DHCP server at home to go with the one here at work so the only difference anymore is whether I log into a server or not.