drplester

[drplester]

I have a Dell dimension 5000 in my study and an Evesham laptop that I
normally use in work. Both PC's use Windows XP (home edition on the study PC and professional on the laptop). I have a BT Voyager 105 modem for the braodband connection but no router.
I work from home 1 or 2 days per week and would like to be able pick up email etc. on my lap top. ( I have broadband on the study PC). Wireless is
obviously the best option but the study is a long way from the small office I have in the garden where I work with the laptop when I am at home, plus
there are 3 walls in between the study and the garden office so this does not seem a good option.
I recently bought a pair of Netgear XE102 wall plugged ethernet bridges that
route the broadband through the 240V electrical house wiring. I then set up a workgroup through the Windows XP network set up wizard on the PC in the
study.
I set the XE102E's up as instructed and there is definite communication
between the PC in the house and the laptop in the garden office, I can see
this because I get the message 'connected at 100 Mbps' etc on the laptop.
I could not use the network set up Wizard on the laptop as it told me that
the laptop is configured for a domain (which it is at work). It is frustrating as neither PC can access the other (although there is communication) and I cannot access the internet for emails from my laptop (which was the whole point of the exercise). Is there any way the laptop can be configured so I can use it in to access internet etc. at home?

[classicsoftware]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums.....


You need to work this out with IT people at work. They may have the laptop setup to prevent this very activity as it opens their network via your now exposed laptop to all kinds of nasties....

[Variable]

Sounds like you have DNS hosed. Domain users use the AD controller to get DNS re Classic is right, it is possible that you cannot change the default settings set up on your laptop. However, you can check this by looking at the LAN settings properties. It should be set for DHCP. IF you connect the laptop to the home network you should be able to access the internet. However, you probably have your mails settings set up for Exchange. Since you are not connected to the Exchange server while at home, you need to set up a VPN connection to work to use Outlook. The other option is Outlook Web Access. If the Exchange server is set up at work to allow this (should be unless they are lazy) you can open a browser and connect to the Exchange server and authenticate your username and password. It will allow you to view mail from home. You will need to ask your workplace network admin what the domain name is to do this. If you need to set up a VPN, they should give you a domain name to connect to.

On the internal network side.
You should be able to view the XP Home machine via the XP Pro laptop. Right click My Computer on the Pro machine and click properties. Click Computer Name tab, click change. You should see a domain name, under it you should see a workgroup name grayed out (If you don't see any thing there, it is probably "workgroup" your XP home is probably "mshome"). Go to your XP Home machine. Following the above steps to view the workgroup name, Change your XP home machine workgroup to match the grayed out workgroup name (or use workgroup) save and reboot the XP Home machine. Once the XP Home machine is rebooted, go to Start, Run and type cmd and hit enter. Type ipconfig and hit enter.
Write down the IP address (you can access the internet with XP Home machine right?). Move back to the XP Pro machine. Go to start, run and type \\192.168.x.x or whatever the IP address is of the home machine and hit enter.

If you get an error message post it...