CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 14: Networks       9  What is a Network?            9  Resource Sharing

File Sharing 1 Printer Sharing

Once you have created a share, the next task is to access it from another machine. The usual method is to map a network drive. To access this option you may either open up an Explorer window and choose “Map Network Drive” from the Tools menu, or right click “My Network Places” on the desktop and choose the same option.

Whichever method you use, you are presented with the dialog seen in Figure 457.

There are 3 steps to mapping a network drive.

• First, select an unused drive letter from the “Drive” combo box.
  
  
• Second, type in the name of the share you wish to map to in the “Folder” combo box. The format of this name is \\name_of_machine\share_name. If the machine we created the share on in the previous step was called “MYPC1”, you would type “\\MYPC1\My Download Files” into this box.
  
  
• Third, if you wish the drive to be mapped permanently, tick the “Reconnect at logon” check box. Leaving this box unchecked will only retain the mapped drive until you log off.

At this point, you can choose whether to supply alternate credentials (username and password) for accessing the share. This is useful when you may be logged on under a user account that does not have access to the resource you need – perhaps you are logged on as a user, but you need to access some software on an administrators-only share. This is also essential in a peer-to-peer network, where you may have a different username and password on every machine. However, in most circumstances you will not need to use this facility. If you wish to, clicking on the blue “different user name” link displays Figure 458.

Enter the new username and password here, and click OK to return to the Map Network Drive dialog. Once you are happy with your settings, click Finish to map your drive. You can now access the remote share via the drive in My Computer or Explorer, just as you would access any local drive.

File Sharing 1 Printer Sharing