What’s a Workgroup?

Here’s another mistake that will kill your attempt at networking two or more Windows PCs together:

The workgroup name is different on one or more of the PCs in your network.

Fine. What’s a workgroup?

“A workgroup is a collection of computers on a local area network (LAN) that are designated to communicate and exchange data with one another.”

By setting all the computers to have the same workgroup name, you can help them send and receive files, etc.

  • If a group of 4 computers, say, all have the same workgroup name, they belong to one workgroup.

  • If two computers have the same workgroup name, and the other two have a different name, then you have two workgroups.
  • If, however, three of them have the same name and the fourth has a different name, you have … a problem. You essentially have one workgroup and one very lonely PC.

How do you get that fourth computer to have the same workgroup name as the other three?

Well, it depends on which operating system you are running.

On Windows 9x:
To set or change workgroup/domain names in older versions of Windows, open the Network icon in Control Panel and choose the Identification tab.
For more details, click here.

On Windows 2000:
To set or change workgroup/domain names in Windows 2000, open the System icon in Control Panel and choose the Network Identification tab, then click the Properties button.
For more details, click here.

On Windows XP:
To set or change workgroup/domain names in Windows XP, right-click on My Computer or open the System icon in Control Panel, then choose the Computer Name tab and finally, click the Change… button to access the workgroup/domain name fields.
For more details, click here.

Here's A Few More Related Posts:
  1. Here’s how to set up a workgroup
  2. One more time: Computer names and Workgroup names
  3. How to configure 2 way access to the “trusted” computers on your network
  4. Know your networking vocabulary

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