Windows 7 : Using a Windows Network - Managing Your Network

When you select Network in the left pane of any Windows Explorer view, the top of the window lists some tasks that can help you manage your network:

• Network and Sharing Center— Opens the Network and Sharing Center window, which you can use to make new network connections, and also change the Home, Work, or Public label for your current network.

• Add a Printer— Opens a wizard to connect to a printer, either a locally attached or a networked printer.

• Add a Wireless Device— Opens a wizard to assist in adding a wireless device such as a wireless printer or network card.

Additional tasks related to using a network can be performed from within the Network and Sharing Center:

• Set Up a New Connection or Network— Starts a wizard to connect to other types of networks, for example, to define a connection to a corporate network via modem or over the Internet.

• Connect to a Network— Displays a list of active and defined network connections. This can be used, for example, to actually connect to another network via dial-up or VPN networking.

• Choose Homegroup and Sharing Options— Lets you join or leave a homegroup, and control what libraries are shared with the group. The tasks you can perform from here are described shortly.

• Change Advanced Sharing Settings— Lets you control networking services and select whether or not passwords are required on your network.

• Troubleshoot Problems— Lets you start troubleshooters to investigate and repair common network problems.

If you select Choose Homegroup and Sharing Options, you can perform several tasks to work with your homegroup. If you aren’t currently a member of a homegroup, you’ll be able to create one, provided that your network location is set to Home Network. If you are member of a homegroup already, there are several actions you can select:

• View or Print the Homegroup Password— Click this to redisplay the password that other computers need to join your homegroup.

• Change the Password— Click to select your own password for your homegroup. We suggest that you keep the random one that Windows generates for you, but you can change it if you like. If you do want to change it, it’s best to do so before you join other computers to the group. And don’t change it to your own user account password or one you use for, say, your online banking, since anyone who uses a member computer can view this password.

• Leave the Homegroup— Click to remove your computer from the group.

• Change Advanced Sharing Settings— Click to change networking features such as Password Protected Sharing.
  

• Start the HomeGroup Troubleshooter— Click if you encounter problems connecting to other homegroup users or computers.

In addition, Windows provides tools that you can use to monitor the use of the files you’re sharing, and command-line tools that you can use to manage network resources that you use and share.

Monitoring Use of Your Shared Folders

If you’ve shared folders on your LAN, you might want to know who’s using them. For example, you might need to know this information if someone were editing a file in your shared folder. If you tried to edit the same file, you’d be told by your word processor that the file was “in use by another.” But by whom?

The Computer Management tool can help you. Open the Start menu, right-click Computer, select Manage, and open the Shared Folders item in the left pane. The Sessions and Open Files sections can show you who is using your shared folders, and which files they currently have open. In an emergency, you can right-click and disconnect a user or close an open file with the Delete key. (This is a drastic measure and is sure to mess up the remote user, so use it only when absolutely necessary.)

Managing Network Resources Using the Command Line

If you find yourself repeating certain network and file operations day after day, it makes sense to try to automate the processes. You might get so used to the graphical interface that you forget the command line, but it’s still there, and you can perform drive mappings and printer selections with the command line almost as easily as from the GUI.

The net command comes to us virtually unchanged since the original PC network software developed by Microsoft and IBM debuted in 1984. There are so many variations of the net command that I think of them as separate commands: net view, net use, net whatever. Each net command contains a word that selects a subcommand or operation type.

Interestingly, the net command not only can manage and explore your network, it also can start and stop Windows services and create user accounts and groups. You can get online help listing all the net subcommands by typing net /?, and get detailed help by typing net command /?, where command is any one of the net subcommands.

The most common use of the net command is to map network folders to drive letters, and network printers to LPT ports for use by MS-DOS programs, using the net use format. Net use makes and disconnects drive mappings, and establishes printer redirection for command-line programs. The basic command is as follows:

net use
							drive sharename

net use q: /delete >nul 2>nul

The following example maps drive letter Q to the shared folder \\abalone\book:

net use q: \\abalone\book

You can’t replace the shared folder attached to an already mapped drive, so you should try to delete a previous mapping before trying to make a new one:

net use q: /delete
net use q: \\abalone\book

Here is an example of a batch file that performs a simple computer-to-computer backup of some important files. Let’s say I want to back up the folder C:\book, and all of its subfolders, from my computer to a shared folder on another computer named abalone. I could put the following commands into a file named backup_book.bat:

@echo off
net use q: /delete 1>nul 2>nul
net use q: \\abalone\book
xcopy c:\book q: /e /r /c /y
net use q: /delete

net use also maps network printers to the legacy DOS printer devices LPT1, LPT2, and LPT3. The only way to redirect DOS program output to a network printer is through net use.

The following command directs DOS application LPT1 printer output to the network printer:

net use lpt1: \\server\printername

The following command cancels it:

net use lpt1: /delete