wired and wireless

Hello all,
I have recently purchased a Compaq Presario A900 notebook and also a Linksys wireless router. I have 5 other computers wired to the wireless router in addition to the wirless notebook. Everything works fine but I have a question. My other computers share a network printer but I cant find it to add to my notebook to use the printer. Should this notebook be a part of the network? I can only find the notebook and the router on the notebook.

Kevin

 

Make sure it belongs to the same workgroup as the other computers. Make sure your firewall isn't blocking access.

 

You are probably on a different workgroup. To change the workgroup, find out what it is on your other PCs (probably WORKGROUP) and then right click on "My Computer"-->Properties-->Change Settings (in the Computer Name section). In the window that pops up, click the Change button and type in the correct workgroup in the "Member of" section. Hope this helps.

-J.B.

 

You must also download the printer driver in your notebook.

 

Thanks for the replies...I am on the same network as my other computers. The firewall was off so I turned it on...no difference. I cant find any of the other computers on the notebook. I browsed the network when I set up the printer on the wired computers. All my network shows is this notebook and the router. The network and printer works fine on the others.

Kevin

 

Did you check the workgroup? That's not the same as the network.

 

That's right, your laptop must also be part of the work group, whatever you called it, and you must also install the printer driver in the new laptop.

 

I assume you're running _Vista on the A900; what OS(es) are you running on the other computers? I ask because there's an additional utility that needs to be installed on XP systems so that _Vista systems can see them properly over a network. The utility is called the Link-Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder, as described in MS KB922120, and can be downloaded from this MS webpage.

Also, as the other posters have indicated, you need to make sure that the new system has joined the same workgroup to which the other computers belong, unless you've got XP Pro systems running in a domain, in which case you'll be SOL (or be forced to drop down to a workgroup arrangement) because, as Microsoft very succinctly points out in KB929543:

However, if you are running the other systems on a domain, there may be an available work-around, as mentioned in this NBR post.

 

Good point regarding the LLTD, I'll rep you as soon as I can

 

Thank you for that information...I am running Vista home premiun on the notebook and XP professional on all the others. I will download the utility and post the results

Kevin

 

Uh-oh. While you're at it, do me a favor. Right-click on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop of one of the XP Pro systems. You'll see a window pop up with several tabs at the top. One of those tabs is called "Computer Name" - left-click on that tab. The view should change, and at the bottom of the window should be two text fields, one of which will be grayed out, and the other of which will have an all-caps name in it. Look at the one with the name in it, and tell me if the name is for a "Domain" (which should be the top field) or for a "Workgroup" (which should be the bottom field).

Once you post that, we'll see where we go from there.

 

Thanks for the updates..Shyster I have downloaded the utility with no difference. I will post the answer to your recent suggestion regarding a domain or workgroup whe I get home.

Thanks again,
Kevin

 

I had my Vista machines working with my XP machines without installing any extra files on my XP or Vista machines. bugly, exactly what steps did you take on the Vista machine to share resources on the network? Did you select Private or Public (it should be Private)?

Network configuration can be tricky with Vista, especially if you haven't done any reading on how Vista works with other operating systems.

 

I have never seeing Public nor Private options on XP or Vista.

 

Read this:

http://windowsis.com/blogs/windowsi...at-is-the-vista-network-location-feature.aspx

 

Oh, that was what you meant, of course, sorry and thank you for the link.