Advice on how I would set up a home network?

Internet is of the plain IP kind of deal, while Microsoft had to uphold the entire SMB suite running over IP. If Internet is up, home network is technically up too.

The first faux pas is: network centers on something besides just a desktop, you can shoehorn desktops as that "something besides" but I would say forget it, not worth it. For a home it is likely a home router.

Without that, the tops cannot hook together, Wi-Fi or otherwise wired. People bringing up X-over: forget it.

NAS is simple, but what I discovered in high school is easier: de-facto sharing names and "domain" based on IP works straight-forward, it works 20 years ago and should work now, follow the setup procedure of Share... and do it like \\192.168.1.2\sharedname\ and forget about all those old NetBIOS malarcky.

Assuming all of your computers are Windows 7 or newer, you can set up a home group in the Network and Sharing center where you can share pretty much anything you want. If you want to spend some extra money and you are very computer literate you can buy a copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012 R2, and use that to have a lot more granular control of the computers and security on your network.

You already have a network if you have a router. As Aaron says, some routers have a USB port built into them and you can simply connect a hard disk to hold & share all the files. But if you want to use the desktop then that is fine too. Without specific server software you are limited to simply setting up a shared area (possibly the whole disk), and you could also connect the printer to the desktop to share as well. The downside is that the desktop would always need to be powered up.

A good place to start is to turn on file and print sharing on the desktop (google file and print sharing for your version of windows), and it would be made much easier if you also set the workgroup/homegroup to have the same name on everything.

A whole lot simpler to share a HDD via the router if possible.

I know of one option you can use. You could map your hard drive, and then you can access one hard drive from other computers that are on the same network.

Visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_mapping

There might be other options to be able to connect your computers with each other from the same network. The key to be able to learn something new is through trial, and error. If you carefully look at your computer, then maybe you might see an option to connect your computers together, and if not, then you can do your own research by using the internet to find some methods to connect your computers together.

If you have a wireless router, then the laptops should be able to connect to it by WiFi. You should connect the desktop machine by Ethernet rather than WiFi both for performance and consistency of connection. You might already have a wireless router as part of a connection to the Internet.

Normally, all your computers should be part of the same work group to gain full networking capability.

It is difficult to advise much further without knowing what your other requirements are, such as Internet access, and what equipment you have already.

You need a wireless router (although you could use wires all over the house). The main PC plugs into the wireless router. Windows has network program installed. Each client machine (laptop, tablet, printer etc.) needs to be wireless capable (or you buy a wireless dongle/ card etc).

Just follow the network setup wizard

I know of one option you can use. You could map your hard drive, and then you can access one hard drive from other computers that are on the same network.

You don't need a desktop. Are all of the laptops connected to the internet by Wifi? If so they are already connected. Then you would need a network drive connected to the wireless router which would store everything.

method to connect 2 computers together ? I have a homegroup computer .& wireless router.

lets start a new trend!!

go on every question u can see and just put a dot

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