[dba-Tech] Windows 10 HomeNetwork

[Gary Kjos]

Hi Gustav

I have a network at home. I guess it is a HomeNetwork.  I have 4
desktops running various versions, Windows 10 64 Pro, Windows 7 64
Pro, Windows Vista, XP. Two laptops, one Vista and one XP. A surround
sound receiver, a Blueray Disk Player, and a HP 8450 Photosmart
Ethernet connected printer all sharing things. I have drives mapped
from system to system where appropriate. Additionally there are 2
tablets and 2 smart phones sharing the Internet through the WIFI
although they aren't connected to other devices. Internet connection
is through a cable company provided modem/router. That router has 4
wired ports and 802.11n WIFI. I have a 8 port Gigabit switch plugged
into one of the wired ports and a second 8 Port Gigabit switched
plugged into one of the ports on the first switch.  The XP desktop is
connected via WIFI as are the laptops but the other 3 desktops, the
surround sound receiver, the Blueray player and the printer are all
connected via wires.  Pretty much everything can see everything with
the exception that the XP systems sometimes have difficulty connecting
to drives on the Win 7 system. Everything can see the printer which is
the main thing that needs to be shared.  None of these systems is
officially a server although I do use some of them as file storage
primarily now.  The desktops have all been my main workstation at home
at some point over the years and rather than just toss them when the
replacement came, I continued to use them for other things and to
remain as a backup of important files that I might still want at some
point.   The router is assigning all the network IP addresses and
things and managing that kind of stuff. I think that is a standard
thing for a router to do.

I certainly am no expert but I have fumbled my way though getting it
working and keeping it working over the years.  The router just died
last Saturday night and so I had to deal with getting a replacement
from the cable company on Sunday morning and getting it configured to
work the same as the old one did with the same encryption password
etc.

My Win 10 system was originally Win 8, then upgraded to 8.1 then to 10
and then I reloaded it completely from a Win 10 64 Pro DVD after
having a video issue on the upgraded version.  It's been stable since
and I am still not sure what happened that necessitated that reload
but I had absolutely no video on it after the BIOS screen. I guess I
did get to a boot menu a few times.  It had been kind of a flaky
system all through it's life until the latest reload. It's a homebuilt
system so only myself to blame there. It's not a mission critical
system for me as it's only the music server for the Home Theater
system and I have hard copies of the music. My Win 7 system is also
built from a barebones kit and it's been very stable over the years.

I think if you have a router you have everything you need to share
files and devices between peer workstations.


On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 2:26 AM, Gustav Brock <gustav at cactus.dk> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Anyone having experience with the HomeNetwork of Windows 10 (or 8.x)?
>
> A friend of mine and his family need some kind of network/interconnection for their four pc/laptops - and a true network with server and AD will be overkill for sure. Besides, some devices only run the Home editions of Windows 7. All machines will be upgraded to Windows 10 however.
>
> /gustav
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-- 
Gary Kjos
garykjos at gmail.com