Have you ever belonged to a club? At your kids’ school, are you a member of the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO)? At your job, do you work in a particular department, like information technology or human resources? Do you play softball in a summer league?

If so, then you already understand the idea of computer names and workgroups. Here’s why you need to understand this stuff:

One of the common mistakes people make when setting up a network is to overlook the workgroup name of the computers IN that network.

The idea is simple: if you want your computers to “talk” to each other then they have to belong to the same club, or organization, or department or team. In short, they have to be configured with the same workgroup name. In Windows, by default, that name is “WORKGROUP.” That makes it easy to allow all your computers to talk together.

Similarly, all computers in the same workgroup must have unique names. After all, two employees named “Sue” in the same department will cause some amount of confusion — so much so that one of them will be called “Sue Robinson” and the other “Sue Jones.”

Here’s what this all means:

If you ever have to troubleshoot a network where not all the computers are able to share files and folders, the simplest place to start is to make sure all the computers are configured with the same workgroup name. At the same time, you can easily verify that the computers all have unique names.

Here’s how to do it:
Continue reading ‘One more time: Computer names and Workgroup names’

Let’s continue to look at some more of the common mistakes that users make when trying share files and folders on a small office or home office network.

Let’s look at the example of several computers running different Windows operating systems. For example, one Windows 2000 computer on a network with one or more Windows 95/98/ME computers.

Let’s also say that the Windows 2000 machine can’t browse the Windows 95/98/ME shared files and folders or vice versa.

Here’s the likely problem:

The Win 2K computer must have a user account on it that can be used by the other computers when they log in to the network.

Note: Do NOT use the administrator account for this purpose! In fact, you should NOT use the administrator account for everyday activities at all. This is because viruses and Trojan horses that run from the administrator account can cause greater harm to your computer than if they were to run from an account that has lesser permissions and/or privileges.

Here’s how to set up that account:
Continue reading ‘How to set up user accounts on Windows 2000′

Right now, there may be one or more zombies in your home or office.

They may be waiting until you go home or go to sleep tonight. They may be waiting until you aren’t watching and then they’ll attack.

Got your attention yet?
Continue reading ‘Have you been added to the ranks of the zombies?’