|
Given the ultra cheap price for hubs, switches and routers - I always advocate their use if you will ever want three or more devices to talk to one another. A five port switch typically costs around $45 and gives you expandability (I don't go as low as hubs) and I strongly advocate routers if you want broadband access to your local PCs. A five port router costs around $115 and it gives you significant access, network configuration and protection for your home PCs.
With that said - I assume all PCs have the same workgroup and each has at least one directory on one drive marked as shared (under Windows explorer -> select say the C:\tmp driver\directory - left click and select Sharing -> Network Permissions) and mark each drive as shared.
Next make sure each group has the same subnet mask - e.g. 255.255.255.0.
What IP address are you setting - valid home addresss - like 192.168.0.200 and 192.168.0.220 - not real internet addresses?
Are you setting TCP/IP as the main comms protocol? Is DHCP turned off and no WINS or DHCP or gateway specified?
Sounds like a basic network setup error - again a hub, switch or router makes a network set-up extremely consistent. Sorry couldn't help more!
|