- ‘Excuse the weird title: It was too long if I used anything else.

If you’ve ever set up a home network, you’ll notice that the first place you get access to is the Shared Documents folder on the other computer. You don’t get access to anything else on the other computer by by default; but you can access all drives on the other computer, including most of the files and folders on them, by setting permissions.

How to set permissions:

Click on My Computer. Right-click a drive that you want to share on the network and click “Sharing and Security”. Click the “Sharing” tab and look in the “Network sharing and security” section in the middle of the box. Check “Share this folder on the network” to allow the drive to be shared on the network. (You might find that you have to set permissions on some of the sub-folders too before you can access them from another computer.) Check “Allow network users to change my files” if you want to be able to alter anything from another computer; otherwise you’ll only be able to read files. (Remember that anyone using the other computer will be able to get into that computer and change anything that has sharing permissions.)

If you have a peripheral device attached to your computer, and you have files and folders on it that you need to transfer across the network, you might run into a problem: You may be able to set permissions for that device; but chances are that the other computer may not be able to see your device; no matter how big it is.

Sometimes there’s no problem, and the other computer sees the device, lists it, and transfers happily. – But Windows can be a bit unpredictable as far as a network is concerned: -

For instance; if I set up my external USB hard-drive on my old computer, my newer computer can’t see it at all: It only sees the internal SATA-connected drives, C:, D:, and F:. If, however, I set up my USB hard-drive on my newer computer. then my older computer sees it and can transfer straight to it without a problem: It all depends on the hardware used, as well as how the motherboard is constructed, among other things.

There are a number of ways round the problem: I could copy everything I wanted to transfer to an internal drive, say F:, but that’s hassle, I might not have enough space on F:, and I’d probably have to erase it all again afterwards even if I had enough space. = Wear on the drive and time unnecessarily taken for a somewhat pointless exercise. _ But I can still transfer the files straight from my external USB drive on my older computer to my newer computer, even though my newer computer can’t see the drive. Here’s how: -

My older computer can see my newer computer, and vice-versa. That’s all it takes: A little manual exercise will sort the problem out. Let me explain: I find my external USB drive in “My Computer” on my older computer; Drive J: in this instance, and I also find the drive on my newer computer that I want to transfer the files and folders to in “My Network Places” on my older computer.

Now I select the files and folders that I want to transfer from the place they’re stored on my newer computer via “My Network Places” and drag them to my external hard-drive in “My Computer”>J:  It’s just a matter of dragging between windows.

Transfer starts; target neutralised.

It’ll also work with most peripheral devices like digital cameras, mp3 players, USB sticks. I’ve never managed to get it to work with a webcam though. – But that’s streaming rather than storage; so it’s a different kettle of fish. Oftentimes it works otherwise.

(I’ve yet to meet anybody who keeps fish in a kettle, or come to that, a different kettle.)

Have you tried this? (No; not keeping fish in a kettle silly; I meant the other thing with the network.) Did it work? Did you need to do it? Do you disagree with me? Please comment below.

(To set up a network you need to have either a patch lead between two computers, or network them through a router or switch by means of a wireless connection and/or a wired ethernet connection. Simply setting the file permissions alone will not network computers together. Use the Network Setup Wizard (NetSetWiz) in XP to accomplish this having connected the computers.)

Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself.

To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it.

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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues.

I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised.

The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties.

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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows:

1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program.

2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that.

3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy.

4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all.

Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”.

There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).

So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong.

HTH (‘Hope That Helps.)

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