how to connect 2 laptops wirelessly

[smaggy123]

Hello
I would really appreciate any help here. I have been trying to connect 2 laptops wirelessly for the last many hours with out joy.

1st laptop- Toshiba, XP SP2, Brought a new Belkin 802.11 g USB wireless network adapter. This connects to internet using dial up. PLEASE NOTE- I am not interested in sharing internet conncetion. I only want to transfer files, etc. Also has printer scanner and ext hard drive attached via USB.

2 nd Laptop - New Toshiba with intel Centrino

My questions are:
1. How do I connect these 2 laptops wirelessly?
2. Do I need any additional equipment like a router?
3. Would I be able to share the hard drive and printer with these 2 laptops?

In one forum, they have posted that I dont need a router and can do it using ad hoc mode- any ideas what this is? Please help.
Thank you

[PrntRhd]

Welcome to the PC Guide forum!

Most of us recommend routers for wireless because the router adds a hardware firewall protection layer that is useful/necessary for security on the Internet.
However, that does not necessarily apply in your situation as you explained.

Here is a link someone posted a few months back re AdHoc wireless:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/bowman_02april08.mspx
I know it is not exactly what you are requesting.

If you just want to transfer files, I use a USB thumb drive as it requires no networking at all and is very efficient. A crossover cable is the second easiest method for file transfer, it plugs one PC into the other, you set up an address scheme to connect them and transfer away.

[smaggy123]

Thank you so much for that link. I tried it and it worked!! I have connected the 2 laptops using ad hoc and I am able to share the printer ! Thank you Mr.Moderator

Now another thing- How do you share files and send files from one laptop to other? I can see that I can only access files in the "shared folder"s on the laptops. I would like to access all folders, incl music. pics, word document, rtc and be able to send them from one laptop to the other one. Can anyone please help?