Setting up Shared Printers

A home network allows more than one computer to share the same connection to the internet. The typical setup includes some sort of broadband connection to the internet, a router (maybe wireless) and more than one computer. Usually your broadband provider (cable company, Verizon, etc.) will configure the basics for you such that all of your computers can connect to the internet, but there is so much more you can do with a home network – such as sharing printers. It can be a life saver when your kid has an assignment due and their printer runs out of ink.

There are essentially two ways to share a home printer. One way is to share a printer that is connected to one of the computers on your network the other is a printer that has a network connection built in that connects directly to your network without the need to connect through a computer. The disadvantage of the first method is that the host computer must be left on all the time to allow other computers on the network to print, while with the second method, there is no host computer, so if the printer is on, you can print. When buying a new printer, you might want to consider one that is network capable – it might be worth the additional cost. But if you already have a direct-connect printer, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t share it with the rest of your network.

Sharing a directly connected printer is not that difficult. With Windows Vista and Windows 7 (Vista/7) there are a couple of extra steps as a result of the operating system’s increased security requirements that should be accomplished first.

With Vista/7 open the Network and Sharing Center (Open Control Panel – Network and Inernet – Network and Sharing Center)

Make sure your setup agrees with the highlighted items above. If your network is listed as a “Public” network – click on customize and change it to “Private”. Turning on printer sharing is self-explanatory, and you don’t want to have to enter a password every time you access the printer, so turn off password protected sharing.

At this point, sharing the printer is easy. On the computer that will be hosting the printer, from the Control Panel open Printers (Control Panel – Hardware and Sound – Printers). If the printer is not already installed, you must install it first. Right click the printer you want to share and select “Sharing”. On the resulting “Sharing” tab select “Share this printer” and enter a Share name. If you enter a name with spaces in it you may get a warning that the printer name is not compatible with earlier versions of Windows. You can safely ignore that question. Practically no one is using such an old version of Windows (or DOS!) that would require a ‘space-less’ printer name.

Now all that is left is to install the printer on the other computers around the house. From Control Panel – Printers, click on add a printer. Select Add a Network Printer. If you are lucky, it will find the shared printer and install the necessary drivers. If not, then you need some advanced troubleshooting. More on that later.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Backup, backup, backup

If everyone follows this advice, my workload will drop dramatically. Fortunately, no one really listens until it is too late. So, please feel free to ignore this advice!

You have got to backup your important files. Lots of people think that they backup their files, but they really don't. If you are depending on a system whereby once-in-a-while you stick a USB thumb drive into your computer, copy off the My Documents folder, and then toss the USB drive into a drawer, you are better off than 90% of the people out there, but you are still not safe.

Your data - pictures of your kids, the book that you are writing, business records, email history, address book, etc are irreplaceable. If you are depending upon a backup system that requires you to remember to do something, you are at risk. If your backup is in the same house/building as the computer where the original data resides, you are at risk. If you are not backing up at all, you are really at risk!

Hard disks crash. All the time. Disasters happen, hopefully not that frequently, but Murphy's Law dictates that when they do happen, it will be at the absolute worst possible time.

Okay, enough pontificating on the subject - we all agree - you need a reliable backup plan. And that the definition of a reliable plan has two major points:

1. No user intervention is required for routine backups
2. Data is stored off-site

Point 3 would be: It is cheap or better yet - FREE.

Only recently has this kind of solution been available to home and small business users. I have been using/testing a solution from Mozy.com that seems to fulfill both of my requirements, and it's FREE (up to a point...)

Mozy installed like a breeze. Selecting the files and folders that I wanted to protect was simple and intuitive. For personal use it is free for up to 2 Gigabytes of data. That's quite a bit of data. Maybe not enough for all your pictures and music, but most of us don't have 2 gigs of data.

Once you try it out for a while and like it, it's simple to upgrade to an unlimited plan, which costs only $4.95 per month. For business users, there are reasonably affordable monthly plans, too.

Set up LogMeIn - free remote access to computer resources.

I like to use LogMeIn to remotely control computers. I especially like free, and LogMeIn is free. They have a pro version that costs a few bucks a month and does some pretty neat things, but for 97% of what I need to do, the free version is just the ticket. It works on both MAC and Windows.

So, if a friend has a computer problem, I can just walk them through the steps to create a personal account for themselves, and then I can remotely control their computer to help them troubleshoot the issue. Here's an amazing thing I discovered, it is actually possible to reboot a remote windows computer and restart it in safe mode, and still reconnect remotely. This is invaluable for troubleshooting viruses and other malware.

Here are the steps to set up a LogMeIn account for yourself:

1. On the target computer, browse to http://www.logmein.com/
2. Click on 'Create an account'
3. Select 'LogMeIn Access, Management, and Networking
4. Fill in the requested information - select I plan to use LogMeIn for: Personal use...
5. Select 'Add this computer' and follow the prompts. Make sure to write down any passwords that you create - at least 8 characters!
6. You'll be prompted to login to your account, and also one more chance to get the Pro version. Let's stick with FREE for now...
7. Check your email inbox, you should get an email from the people at LogMeIn welcoming you, and more importantly, prompting you to complete the registration process. Click on the link in the welcome email, and you should be all set!
8. There should be a new little blue icon in your system tray. Hover your mouse over it and it should say; "LogMeIn - enabled and online". You can right click and turn off LogMeIn if you want to, but I always leave mine on to allow me the flexibility of accessing that computer from wherever I might be.

Now you can control the target computer remotely by logging into your LogMeIn account, select the computer, and off you go! It supports dual monitors, you can chat with the user on the other end, the users at both ends can both see the screen and what's happening, so it is ideal for troubleshooting, or showing someone how to do something.

No Broadband? No Problem.

In our little town, just about everyone has Verizon Fios. It's amazing, since we live in a rural town that does not even have cable TV. For whatever reason, some roads got bypassed – too few houses per mile, or something. What to do? Keep dialing up at 56K? Not if you have a half-way decent cell phone signal.

Last week I helped a friend set up a home network with a Verizon USB broadband dongle. And it works pretty darn well.

I got him a Kyocera KR2 mobile router. It is compatible with a whole bunch of 1XEVDO cards , including USB, PCMCIA and Express cards. You have to check to make sure that your card is supported, and so what if it isn't – just turn your card in and get a new one that is on the list!

I was really impressed with the KR2 router. It has all the capabilities of a first class wireless broadband router. You can use it for a broadband connection, and then the EVDO card becomes a 'fail over' in the event your cable or fiber optic connection goes down. Most of us don't need that kind of connectivity, but it's nice to know. It has dynamic DNS capabilities, port forwarding, routing, the latest wifi security protocols. And it worked right out of the box just the way it was supposed to!

Keep iTunes and LimeWire Organized

It takes a little bit of knowledge and maintenance to keep iTunes organized, and even then, it gets a little confusing.

When you download a song using LimeWire the mp3 file itself gets copied into LimeWire's default directory somewhere. LimeWire can add it directly to iTunes, if you configure LimeWire properly.

Open LimeWire, click Tools, Options:

Now you can see, and/or modify where LimeWire songs go to. Plus, you can check the box that says "Add audio files I downloaded from LimeWire to iTunes" Now Your LimeWire downloads should appear immediately in your iTunes library. You need to do this step only once.

You also need to teach iTunes to manage your files better. You can find these setting in iTunes . Click Edit, Preferences, and select the Advanced tab. On this tab you can modify where iTunes keeps your music, but more importantly, you can tell iTunes to keep your iTunes media folder organized, and for iTunes to automatically copy files that are added to your library into the iTunes media folder when adding to library. Make sure both of these boxes are checked.

Now iTunes is set up to be your one stop shopping center for music organization and management.

But wait! There is one more important step that you need to accomplish once in a while, and at least once right now: You need to tell iTunes to copy the audio files from wherever they currently are directly into the iTunes library. This step is sort of optional, but it really helps to keep iTunes organized and prevents lost files and such.

Open iTunes and click File, Library, Organize Library:

Check the box that says Consolidate files and click OK. It will copy any orphaned MP3 files from wherever they are into the iTunes media folder. Setting up LimeWire and iTunes as per the previous steps should make this step unnecessary, but I find that once in a while a song sneaks by my best laid plans.

When you click OK, iTunes copies the MP3 from wherever it is on you disk into the iTunes media folder. The box then resets to being unchecked so it's ready for the next time.

When all else fails, contact me at support@spftechnology.com!

Home and Small Business Technology Consutant

I am going to share tips and tricks that I have assembled for maintaining home and small business networks. Tinkering with home and business networks has been my hobby and vocation for over fifteen years. How cool is that?