Networking winXP and win95

Hi all!

I am running winXP on my 3 home PC's and all are networked together just fine.

I want to add my laptop to the network, but it is an older one and can only handle win95.

Is there a way to network all 4 together so that I can still share files and the printer?

Thanks for any help!

 

Most likely can do, but need more info. What is your current network setup? Router? Hardwired or wireless? What does your laptop have available? PCMCIA cardslot? Laptop make and model?

 

more info

I have an IBM thinkpad 365X laptop with a PCMCIA network card, I am running IE 5.0 and can use it to connect to highspeed to go online, both at home and at school.

All of the computers are hooked up to a common HUB which is then hooked up to my DSL modem.

I would like to be able to figure out if I can network all 4 pc's together to facilitate file transfers between my main home PC and the laptop.

Thanks for any help.

 

A PMMCIA ethernet card would be all you need. I'm sure you can get them elsewhere, but here's a couple of sources.

Laptops for Less

Synchrotech

Might check with newegg.com or a local Circuit City.

Also found this, which may be helpful if you run into problems.

 

Just reread your last post, and I see I didn't read it too well the first time. You already have a card!? All you need at this point is to add the laptop to the network?

This tutorial should be helpful.

 

All of the computers are hooked up to a common HUB which is then hooked up to my DSL modem

That wouldn't work.

If you only have one connection from the device containing the ports to a DSL modem and all of them have internet access, you have a router and any recent ones will be a combo router/switch rather than a router/hub. In fact, I'm not even aware that anyone ever made a router/hub combo.

It may seem like a minor matter of semantics but if you run a switch and folks trying to help with network issues think you have a hub, you could easily get wrong advice based on the differences in switches and hubs and the lack of any mention of a router.

 

Sorry for any misunderstanding

I have a star tech 5-port fast ethernet switch which all pc's plug into and the switch is plugged into my DSL modem.

 

Thanks for the clarification. They should connect fine.

One thing to watch for though. Unless the 9X PC has the user logging on with a username and non-blank password, you'll be pretty limited in what it will be allowed to share.

You need to have the user logging on and then any of
- enable the guest account on the XP machines (on by default with Home and off by default with Pro)
- identical username/password to log on to all the PCs
- add the 9X username/password to the Local Users and Groups, Users section on each XP PC.