Chapter 1: Attaching to a Network In This Chapter ✓Choosing between home, work, and public network types ✓Getting your computer attached to an existing network ✓Looking at how HomeGroups work ✓Slicing and dicing your HomeGroup A ttaching your Windows 7 computer to an existing network rarely involves more than a few mouse clicks. Correctly attaching your Windows 7 computer to an existing network requires a bit more. Historically, Microsoft has had no end of problems with networking. Computers drop on and off the network like hyperactive jumping beans, for absolutely no reason other than that they’ve entered a new phase of the moon. Shared printers or folders appear and disappear at random intervals. A Windows Vista computer can see a Windows XP computer on the net- work, but not vice versa. Or the other way around. I’ve lost more than a few pulled hairs trying to get my networks to network. I would bet you have, too. Windows 7 brings a whole new approach to the networking game and, if you understand what it’s supposed to do, it works. Unfortunately, if you have Windows XP computers or Windows Vista computers connected to your network, they’ll likely continue to suffer the same slings and arrows that have always dogged them. But, in my experience, the Windows 7 computers on your network will work together nicely, and in most cases they play well with their less-endowed brethren. This chapter takes you through the steps necessary to get your Windows 7 computer attached to an existing network — and to do a good job of it. Pay attention when you first attach it to a network and you can ignore the net- work afterward: It just works. Mess things up initially, and you may feel the ramifications of your choices days, weeks, or months from now. This chapter also includes a section on playing Wi-Fi hide-and-seek — the steps you can take to ensure that your laptop connects to the correct net- work, the first time. Contents Chapter 1: Attaching to a Network 697 Choosing Between Home, Work, and Public 698 Understanding HomeGroups 700 Hooking Up to a Wireless Network 703 Hooking Up to a Wired Network 709 Caring for Your HomeGroup 712 698 Choosing Between Home, Work, and Public If you haven’t yet set up a network, look at Chapter 2 in this minibook. Chapter 3 of this minibook explains how to expand your network. To set up a wireless network, see Book VII, Chapter 4. But if you already have a net- work in your home or office, or if you’re trying to connect to a network in a coffee shop or airport, you’re in the right place. Before you set up a network connection in Windows 7, it helps a lot if you understand two pivotal concepts: network type and HomeGroups. Permit me to start this chapter with an explanation of both and then show you how to attach your computer to a network. Choosing Between Home, Work, and Public Are you connecting to a home, work, or public network? That’s the first question Windows 7 asks when you try to hook into a net- work (see Figure 1-1). It doesn’t matter if you’re using a Wi-Fi card, a LAN cable, or a piece of string attached to two cups — Windows wants to know whether you’re in your house, at work, or in the public. It’s downright eerie, eh? Kinda begs the question if you work at home. Figure 1-1: The Set Network Location dialog box. It’s also the number-one question I hear from Windows 7 networkers: What’s the difference between home, work, and public? Book VII Chapter 1 Attaching to a Network 699 Choosing Between Home, Work, and Public Here’s what’s really going on with the three network types:  ✦ Public: If you tell Windows 7 that you’re connecting to a public network, it puts up your PC’s shields. Windows Firewall plugs almost all its open- ings — the only ones left open are the ones absolutely necessary for Windows to communicate with the outside world. (See the discussion of Windows Firewall ports in Book VI, Chapter 3.) Windows 7 also starts the internal programs, or services, that are appropriate for running Windows connected to a potentially hostile network.  ✦ Work: If you tell Windows 7 that you’re connecting to a work network, it opens Windows Firewall so that you can communicate with other computers on your network and share folders, say, or use printers on the network. Windows starts the services that are appropriate for a com- puter running on a trusted network — services that look for and connect to other computers and make your computer visible on the network.  ✦ Home: A home network behaves a lot like a work network, but when you choose Home, Windows 7 goes out and looks for other Windows 7 com- puters on the network. If it finds other Win7 computers and they already have a HomeGroup going (see the next section), Windows 7 invites you to join that HomeGroup. If it doesn’t find one, Windows 7 asks whether you want to start one. There’s a big difference between a public network, on the one hand, and home or work networks, on the other. But the difference between home and work networks, at least to a first (and second) approximation, is that a home network supports HomeGroups, whereas a work network doesn’t. Or, to put it another way, if you want to use a HomeGroup for all Windows 7 computers in your office (see the next section), you must tell Windows 7 that you’re on a home network. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a home office, an office home, an office office, or the middle of a Faraday cage in the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek: If you want to set up or use a HomeGroup, you have to choose the home network type. Windows remembers the network type, so if you switch networks (common with a laptop and unusual for a wired connection) and Windows can identify the new network, it doesn’t ask again whether it’s a public, work, or home network. It uses the old settings. There’s one additional network type, which you encounter only if you plug your computer into a big Corporate Network: a domain network. Central computers — the servers — completely control a domain network. Some domains can even support HomeGroups. If you want to know more about domain networks, see Networking For Dummies, 8th Edition, by Doug Lowe (Wiley). It’s a whole different world. 700 Understanding HomeGroups Understanding HomeGroups So you have a network, and two or more of the Windows 7 computers on the network say that it’s a home network (see the preceding section). Good. Now you can start thinking about HomeGroups. Don’t be put off by the term HomeGroup. If you have a business and need to share information, a HomeGroup may provide exactly what you want. As of this writing, anyway, HomeGroups work with only Windows 7 comput- ers. You can have a zillion computers on your home network, running Windows and MacOS and Linux, laughing and printing and crashing together, but only the ones running Windows 7 with a designated home net- work type can participate in a HomeGroup. If you have computers that run something other than Windows 7 or you have Windows 7 computers that are set up with work or public networks, you can think of a HomeGroup as a clique inside your network. The HomeGroup bundles a bunch of settings in quite a handy — I’m tempted to use the word brilliant — way. When your PC joins a HomeGroup, Windows strips away a lot of the hassle and mind-numbing details generally associ- ated with sharing folders and printers and replaces the mumbo jumbo with a cookie-cutter method of sharing that works quite well, in almost all home and many small-business networks. To connect to a HomeGroup, you need its password. Microsoft likens it to having a key to a house. At the risk of stretching a metaphor, if you have the key to the house (the HomeGroup password), you can get into anything in the house (printers, folders, and files inside those folders, in particular). When you dig a little deeper, here’s what you find:  ✦ A HomeGroup connects computers, not users. If you attach a Windows 7 PC to a HomeGroup, all the people using that PC — all its user accounts — gain access to the data in the HomeGroup. Conversely, anyone accessing the HomeGroup from another computer gains access to the specified folders for all users on your PC.  ✦ Although you can override the default choices (see Figure 1-2), when you join your PC to a HomeGroup, you make all Pictures, Music, and Videos libraries on your PC available to other PCs in the HomeGroup; your printers are shared, too. Note that I said libraries, not folders. (I talk about libraries in Book II, Chapter 1.) If you share the Pictures libraries on your PC with the HomeGroup, for example, all folders in all the Pictures libraries for all Book VII Chapter 1 Attaching to a Network 701 Understanding HomeGroups users on your computer are shared. If you add a folder from a Windows XP computer to your Pictures library and your PC is in a HomeGroup, that folder on the Windows XP computer becomes accessible to every user on every computer in the HomeGroup. Figure 1-2: When your computer joins a HomeGroup, you can select which libraries to share. More than that, you can put folders from other HomeGroup computers’ libraries into your libraries. So if a computer in your HomeGroup has a Pictures library that includes a folder from a Windows XP PC, you can simply copy that folder into your Pictures library and it works like any other folder in your Pictures library. Combining HomeGroups and librar- ies leads to enormously powerful capabilities. ✦ When you join your PC to the HomeGroup, you get to decide whether you want to share the Documents libraries for all users on your PC. If you choose to share documents, the Documents library for every user on your computer gets shared. That may or may not be what you want, so consider your choice carefully. When you share a file, it’s important to understand whether other people in your HomeGroup can only open the file, modify its contents, or delete it. The default permissions level for HomeGroup-shared folders s a bit convoluted, but it makes sense. Unless you specifically modify the permissions (more about that in the “Caring for Your HomeGroup” section, at the end of this chapter), here’s what you get:  ✦ Other users in your HomeGroup can open all files in your libraries (Pictures, Music, Videos, and, optionally, Documents). 702 Understanding HomeGroups  ✦ Other users in your HomeGroup cannot change files in your per- sonal folders (your \Pictures, \Music, \Videos, and, optionally, \ Documents folders). But they can change or delete files in your comput- er’s Public folders (\Public\Pictures, \Public\Music, \Public\ Videos, and, optionally, \Public\Documents). They can also add new files to the public folders.  ✦ If you have other folders in your libraries, the folders inherit the restrictions that are set on the computer containing the folders. You can change the permissions level at any time — restrict access to fold- ers or add new folders on your PC to the HomeGroup, for example. I show you how, in the section “Caring for Your HomeGroup,” later in this chapter. The easy way to add a folder to your HomeGroup? Go to any computer that’s attached to the HomeGroup and drag the folder into the appropriate library. That’s all it takes. After the folder sits inside one shared library, you can click and drag it into any other library on any computer that’s attached to the HomeGroup. When your computer is attached to a HomeGroup, you see a direct link to the HomeGroup on the left side of the Windows Explorer window (see Figure 1-3). From that jumping-off point, you can easily look at all shared folders on all computers in your HomeGroup. Figure 1-3: Your HomeGroup appears on the left side of the Explorer window. Click here to start exploring all shared folders in your HomeGroup. HomeGroup links also appear in Windows Media Player (in the navigation pane on the left) and Windows Media Center (in the shared section of the browser). Book VII Chapter 1 Attaching to a Network 703 Hooking Up to a Wireless Network Printers on a HomeGroup-connected computer are shared automatically with all other Windows 7 computers on the HomeGroup. You don’t need to add a printer or install drivers. It just happens automatically, as long as the printer has the Windows logo — as do most of the printers made in the past few years. Now that you know the inside story about HomeGroups, you may be tempted to switch your Windows 7 PCs from the work type over to the home network type so that you can set up a HomeGroup. Fortunately, that’s easy to do — see the section “Caring for Your HomeGroup,” at the end of this chapter. Hooking Up to a Wireless Network So you want to attach your computer to a wireless network? Good. You’re in the right place. (If you want to connect to a network with a LAN cable, skip ahead to the “Hooking Up to a Wired Network” section.) In this section I discuss hooking into a Wi-Fi (also known as an 802.11) net- work. I assume that the network is working and broadcasting its ID (known as an SSID) and that you know the password if the network requires one. The method for connecting to WiMax networks, HSDPA, CDMA, and other kinds of networks is generally different from the steps listed here. You prob- ably need to refer to the instructions that came with the WiMax or HSDPA service, your mobile phone, or CDMA network. If you’re connecting in a public place such as a hotel or a coffee shop, the people who run the network (or hotel or coffee shop) may have provided you with a user ID and a password. They may have charged you for the userID and password. Confusingly, that kind of user ID and password is dif- ferent from a network password. If you have a user ID and password, follow along here but don’t be surprised if you aren’t asked for a password to con- nect to the network. They’ll get ya after you’re connected. Read on. Here’s how to get your PC going on a functional wireless network: 1. Make sure your wireless chip or card is working. Nine times out of ten, if you can’t get Windows 7 to connect to a working Wi-Fi network, it’s because you haven’t turned on the wireless hardware inside your computer. Many laptops have a switch or a function (Fn) key combination that enables or disables the wireless hardware (see Figure 1-4). Most modern laptops have a light that glows when the wireless 704 Hooking Up to a Wireless Network hardware is working. (Laptop manufacturers use switches so that you can turn off wireless and save battery power when you aren’t using the network.) If you can’t find the switch, consult the manual or ask your 8-year-old to find it for you. Kids seem to have a knack — and the eye- sight — for spotting obscure switches. Hold down the Fn key and press F2. 2. If wireless networks are available — broadcasting their IDs — the star- burst on the stepladder “bar” icon in the notification area, near the clock, starts to glow and pulse. Click on it. You see a list of all available networks, as shown in Figure 1-5. 3. Click the name of the network you want to use. If you want to have Windows connect to the network automatically in the future, select the indicated check box. Then click Connect. Figure 1-4: To enable (or disable) wireless on the Eee PC 1000H, hold down the Fn key and press F2. Book VII Chapter 1 Attaching to a Network 705 Hooking Up to a Wireless Network The little starburst whirls and twirls and whistles an inaudible tune, and if the network has a password, it asks you to provide it. When it’s done, you probably see the Set Network Location dialog box (refer to Figure 1-1). I say probably because if you’ve already chosen a network type for this particular connection, Windows is smart enough to use it again. Figure 1-5: A list of all networks broad- casting their IDs. 4. Take a look at the preceding section for a description of home, work, and public network types, and choose accordingly. If you choose Public or Work, the computer connects, and after a minute or two you’re done. Congratulations! Crank up Firefox or Internet Explorer and make sure you’re connected to the Internet. This is where the user ID and password I mention at the beginning of this section may come in to play. If you’re connecting to a network inside a hotel, or a for-pay network almost anywhere, the people who run the network may ask for a user ID and password. You know for sure if you get the wireless connection going, start your favorite browser, and see a logon screen like the one shown in Figure 1-6. The user ID and password may be free for hotel guests or coffee shop customers; it may cost two arms and three legs. You have to look or ask around. If you tell Windows that you’re connecting to a home network, it runs out to see whether other Windows 7 computers are running on the network and whether any of them has a HomeGroup set up. If there’s a 706 Hooking Up to a Wireless Network HomeGroup already, you see a message like the one shown in Figure 1-7. (If there’s no HomeGroup, you see an offer to set up a new HomeGroup. See the later section “Hooking Up to a Wired Network” for details.) Figure 1-6: A typical hotel wireless login screen. Enter your user ID (card number) and password (PIN number) and you’re riding on the Internet. Figure 1-7: The invitation you receive the first time you connect to a network, if Windows finds a HomeGroup. 5. If you want to join a HomeGroup (Hint: You probably do), click the button marked Join Now. Windows wants to know which libraries to share with the HomeGroup and whether you want to share any printers attached to your PC (see Figure 1-8). [...]... servers Usually The term workgroup has kind of fallen out of favor: You have to look hard in Windows 7 to find it Windows 7 introduces the far more useful concept of HomeGroups, which are cliques of specific Windows 7 computers running inside a workgroup Peer-to-peer networking doesn’t get hung up in the kind of security and central administration that client/server networks take for granted For example,... folders inside a Windows 7 library (and thus, if you like, a Windows 7 HomeGroup) You can use Windows 7 applications, such as Windows DVD Maker, on data from pre Windows 7 computers ✦ You have an easy way to make backups The easiest, fastest, most reliable way to back up data is to copy it from the hard drive in one machine to the hard drive in another machine on the network Understanding Networks 72 1... networks I introduce some of the joys of Windows Home Server in Book II, Chapter 3 If you’re interested in adding WHS to your network, check out Windows Home Server For Dummies (Wiley), which I also wrote Organizing Networks 72 5 Microsoft introduced a new umbrella security system in Windows 2000 Server: Active Directory is designed to put control of all client/server security activities in one place... available to anyone on the network, at any time Except in extreme situations, not even Windows Firewall can help If you try to install and maintain a client/server network yourself — even with helper tools such as Microsoft Small Business Server — be aware that it’s not nearly as simple as the marketing brochures would have you believe Many Dummies, myself included, feel that installing and maintaining your... Running Windows 7 dialog box (Figure 1 -7, earlier in this chapter), which appears automatically Adding or blocking folders in the HomeGroup If you want to make a folder available to everyone in your HomeGroup, the simplest approach is to add it to one of your shared libraries See Book II, Chapter 1 for details 71 6 Caring for Your HomeGroup If you share your Documents library, for example, adding a... side, as in Figure 1-15 Book VII Chapter 1 Attaching to a Network Figure 1-15: A brandspankingnew HomeGroup, ready for Windows 7 PCs As far as I can tell, there’s no way to set up more than one HomeGroup on a single network Even if you could, it’d get mighty complicated, mighty fast 71 2 Caring for Your HomeGroup HomeGroups work well with Windows Home Server I introduce Windows Home Server in Book... Network and Internet, click the link that says Choose HomeGroup and Sharing Options Then click the link View and Print Your HomeGroup Password Jot down (or print) the password Back in Figure 1 -9, type the password and click Next Windows advises that you have joined the HomeGroup 8 Click Finish All your Explorer windows start showing the HomeGroup item on the left (refer to Figure 1-3) Windows immediately... sitting inside a shared library Caring for Your HomeGroup 71 7 Figure 1-21: The Down- loads folder becomes available on all computers that belong to the HomeGroup Book VII Chapter 1 Attaching to a Network 71 8 Book VII: Networking with Windows 7 Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Own Network In This Chapter ✓ Finding out why you do want a network, at the office and at home ✓ Determining whether your office needs... one computer can be used by the other That Blu-ray recorder on your desktop, for example, can be used by your laptop, the same way as if it were connected directly A printer or (in some cases) a scanner attached to one computer can be shared by all computers ✦ You can use Windows 7 features on data from other machines, regardless of whether they’re running Windows 7 For example, you can stick a Windows. .. topic in this chapter In Chapter 3, I show you how to put together your own network, if you feel so inclined, and how to shoot beyond built -in troubleshooters 72 0 Understanding Networks Understanding Networks Not long ago, networks were considered esoteric and intimidating, the province of guys in white lab coats, whose sole purpose in life was to allow you to print on the company’s fancy laser printer . Home, Windows 7 goes out and looks for other Windows 7 com- puters on the network. If it finds other Win7 computers and they already have a HomeGroup going (see the next section), Windows 7 invites. 1: Attaching to a Network 6 97 Choosing Between Home, Work, and Public 698 Understanding HomeGroups 70 0 Hooking Up to a Wireless Network 70 3 Hooking Up to a Wired Network 70 9 Caring for Your. network, running Windows and MacOS and Linux, laughing and printing and crashing together, but only the ones running Windows 7 with a designated home net- work type can participate in a HomeGroup.