PCA Forums

I have 2 pc's running XP pro, and I need to connect them together to share printers and drives.

My question is: can this be done simply with a router and a pare of cables? I don't want to buy a cross over cable if I have a spare router sitting around.

If the router will work (I don't need Internet connection) how do I connect the 2 pc's? The router has a WAN port on one side, and 4 RJ-45 ports on the other.

2 pc's and a router in an isolated workgroup:

plug both the cables into the "regular" ports(1-4 for a 4-port router)

set both pc's to "automatically detect ip" as well as dns in the TCP/IP properties

access the web interface by typing the IP into the address bar of your browser(for linksys =192.168.1.100)

make sure DHCP is enabled in your router settings

run the network setup wizard in xp for both machines and make sure you give them both the same workgroup name.

you may have to reboot the pc's and router, if you do, shut everything down, power on the router first, then the pc's

if you want this to be connected to a larger network that already has a dhcp server, you will need to disable dhcp, set the router to be a switch only and (easiest way) give the 2 pc's static IPs

Yes, a router and a pair of cables will work. You connect both PCs to the switch side of the router (one of the 4 jacks) and leave the WAN jack unplugged).

If the router had DHCP enabled (should be by default) and both PCs have TCP/IP on their NICs configured to obtain their IPs automatically. then both PCs will be assigned an IP by the router.

You should give each PC a logical network name (PC1 & PC2 for example) and use the same workgroup name for both (MSHOME or WORKGROUP will be fine).

For more details on file and printer sharing go here: http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/net.asp

OK thanks. This is only a temporary setup for our swim meet this weekend. We run a program called Meet Manager, and it does not require 2 pc's, but it streamlines running the program as one pc can be printing out results and events, while the times are entered into the other pc.