A day in the life of a computer repair tech

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Hey Craig, of Autumn Wood Way, in Potomac,

I am glad I was able to help you get your old Win98SE computer onto your Network.

Craig has an old Dell Dimension 4100, a much newer Dell Dimension 8400, and a new notebook with Windows Vista.

He wanted to be able to share a folder between his Win98SE Dell, and his WinXP Home machine. It should have been pretty simple. I turned on file and printer sharing on his older system, and also on his XP system. Shared a folder on the older system, and then tried to map to it from the new system.

Two problems

1. The XP system was not seeing the older Dell on the network at all, and
2. The Older Dell’s keyboard was not working very well. Some critical keys were not working.

The keyboard problem needed to be solved first. Of course WinXP has the “keyboard on screen” option, but not Win98. So I downloaded a virtual keyboard, and was then able to type again.

With the virtual keyboard I was able to change the workgroup, and also explicitly map \\new_dell_name to the newer dell.

Still no luck. So I started to look around to figure out what could be blocking. On the old Dell Craig had an old version of Norton Internet Security, that was disabled, and also no longer current. Norton, as well as just about all of the other software firewalls are complicated, and thus prone to failure. Don’t get me wrong, I like Norton Internet Security, but like McAfee, and Zone Alarm, and all the rest … software firewalls break the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) rule, and thus are prime suspects when you have problems.

Sure enough. I removed Norton Internet Security ( 2004 version, I think), and the file sharing then worked.

Thanks for stopping by.

At WatzaNetwork? we offer you help with your PC, Mac, Blackberry, Palm, Router, DSL, or Cable modem.

We provide at your site services in Montgomery, and Frederick counties MD, including

Gaithersburg, Montgomery Village, Germantown, Rockville, Potomac, Darnestown, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring (including Liesure World), Clarksburg, Urbana, Ijamsville, and Frederick, MD.

Or see our computer products store. We sell PCs ( XP and Vista ), Macs, Routers, etc.