Windows Networking: Sharing Files and Resources

by Lowell Heddings on

Networking

This Geek School class will teach you everything you need to know about sharing files and resources like printers in a Windows-based network.

Lesson 1: User Accounts, Groups, Permissions & Their Role in Sharing

This How-To Geek School class is intended for people who have their own home network with at least one Windows PC or device. The end objective is to give you the knowledge you need in order to set up sharing in Windows and be able to share files, folders, and devices with other PCs or devices in your home network, regardless of the operating system.

Lesson 2: The Basic Concepts in Network Sharing

In this lesson you will learn several networking concepts: the workgroup, the computer name, the IP address, the network location and the Homegroup. Our objective is for you to understand what these concepts are and what their role in network sharing is.

Lesson 3: Customizing Your Network Sharing Settings

The objective for this lesson is to explain all the network sharing settings that are available in Windows and what they do. It sounds simple, isn’t it? But unfortunately it is not.

Lesson 4: Sharing with Others Using the Public Folder

The objective for this lesson is to explain the Public folder concept, what it is and how it works. As you will see, this folder can be used both for sharing with other people that use the same computer and with others on the network.

Lesson 5: Sharing With the Homegroup

The objective for this lesson is for you to gain a complete understanding of the Homegroup concept and how it works for network sharing.

Lesson 6: Sharing With the Network Using the Sharing Wizard

The objective for this lesson is to explain in detail what the “Sharing Wizard” in Windows is, how it works, and how to use it in network sharing.

Lesson 7: Sharing with the Network Using Advanced Sharing

The objective for this lesson is to explain the concept of “Advanced Sharing” and how it works in Windows.

Lesson 8: How to Work With Network Drives & Network Locations

The objective for this lesson is to explain what network drives and network locations are, what they do, why they are useful, and how to use them.

Lesson 9: How to Share Devices With Others On the Network

The objective for this lesson is to explain how to share your printer and external hard drives with others on the network.

Lesson 10: How to View & Access What’s Shared on the Network

For the last lesson in this Geek School series, we will talk about accessing everything that’s shared on the network.

Lowell Heddings is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He spends all his free time making sure this site can bring you fresh geekery on a daily basis, and has been doing so for over eleven years.