A common difficulty is just getting the right "name and address" for the sharing, especially for printers and other peripherals.

If you're using the built in Windows stuff, you do have to create a local network on one of your machines for the machines to see each other. Machines (including your net interface) can't "get inside" each other without some networking protocol setups. I'd suggest doing the setup on your "best" machine - or at least the one you think might be around the longest.

At Start | Settings | Network Connections you should find a "Network Setup Wizard" in any recent Win versions. Creating a "Workgroup" is the simplest, unless you have some other networking software you want to use.

If you have older computers (i.e. using obsolete OS) you want to use on the LAN, the wizard may tell you to make a floppy to use to set up other machines. With most recent Win versions on the other machines you shouldn't need it.

Each machine may have to "join" the network. On each machine, in Win Explorer, right click on "My Computer," select "Properties," and click the "Computer Name" tab. There should be "wizard buttons" there that will be fairly obvious, although different Windows versions vary a bit. Giving each computer a "Name" for use on the LAN is recommended.

On the machine where a folder or program "lives" you have to enable sharing. Default is always NOT SHARED. To share a folder, just right click it in Win Explorer, click properties, and click the Sharing tab. You can share the folder and all subfolders (recommended) or you can share only one level at a time. I'd suggest applying the share to a minimum number of folders with subs included, at least to begin with, since every folder you click and share will appear when another machine looks for the connection to your machine. Too many choices just confuses things.

If you have installed recent security updates, at least on Win2K and WinXP, by default you cannot share your "C:\" (root) folder. You can override that, but it's not recommended. If you use it, share "My Documents" and just put everything there.

To share a printer, on the machine the printer connects to, Start | Settings | Printers and Faxes. Right click on the printer, select Properties, click the Sharing tab. Click to set Share. It is recommended that you give the printer a short distinctive name. A tab there should offer to load drivers that can be used if a machine that doesn't have the driver wants to connect to it.

Each machine that wants to use a printer on the Lan has to install it. If a printer is connected to another computer, you usually have to try to browse for it or call it up as "printername on \\Computername." For some arcane reason, nothing in any Windows Help seems to want to mention that you have to use the "double \" when describing another computer on your network.

If the machine that connects directly to the printer has been set to load drivers for all Win versions, the machine that's installing a shared printer should get everyting it needs from there. In some cases you may need an installation disk to provide a driver that matches the computer OS to the printer on the other computer.

Once things are set up, you can use Windows Explorer, go to \My Network Places\Entire Network\Microsoft Windows Network and you should find your "Group Name" there. Click it and it should show all the computers that are "joined." Click any computer, and it should show all the folders that are shared on that computer.

Since each computer has all the shared printers "installed," when you hit a "Print" it should show you a list of printers you can use.

If you Map a drive that's on a computer that requires password access, the Mapping link will expire frequently, making you log in to the other computer to reconnect to it, so mapping is not too handy on this sort of simple network. Going directly to the shared folders, as described above is simpler. You can creat a shortcut on your machine to a shared folder on another machine, and it should let you connect to the shared folder without repetitive loging - depending on settings, of course.

That's the brief outline - for Windows simple LAN setup. I think(?).

John