Thursday 19 November 2009

Networking Laptops together!

Yeah right.

Today has been a great day to hide away with the strong winds and rain. So I have spent all day today trying to network our two laptops together.  I went out and bought a crossover cable to enable me to do this but with no apparent success.  John on Nb Epiphany had a go when we were travelling with them a few weeks ago, with no luck either.  So I am in good company. 

I believe that Vista and XP don't like talking to each other, it must be a breakdown in communication in the Microsoft family.

If anyone has an easy and understandable way to network them so that we can share an internet connection, we would appreciate any help.  I have followed all instructions that appear to be easy but they don’t work.

Meantime Derek has had the living room in an upheaval by replacing some of the old skirting boards.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi D&D,

Hope you're ok, you can't network 2computers together with using one Wi-Fi signal. The crossover cable can't split the signal, you would need a dingle dongle for each computer, which = cost x 2 per month.
In theory the crossover cable might work with a Wi-Fi connection per computer but it's doubtful.

It has nothing to do with which OS, XP & Vista work well together (after a bit of fiddling about!)

H

Matt said...

Networking XP and Vista...
I have done it before, did it when I first got a Vista machine. Off the top of my head can't remember which way I ended up sharing a drive, but I know the firewall was the pain.
Try turning off the firewalls on each machine and give that a go. If you don't get any joy let me know and I will check the settings of the machines I did it on.
All the best,
Matt

nblazydays said...

I use a 3g router which gives you wifi on the boat so you just set up the router with your 3g dongle and you can use any number of computers from anywhere on the boat and off it, within reason. I may do a page on the setup. I have tried two routers but was not happy with the first and bought one recently from Amazon for £42. My blog link for the setup is here

http://nblazydays.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/internet-connection/

But I would not recommend the Solwise router.

Hope this is helpful.

Alan

Derek and Dot said...

Thank you everyone for your comments, the 3G router sounds a good idea. Thanks Alan a page on the setup would be great for many other boaters also.