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Got a few (hopefully) simple WinXP questions....
Vlad
Earthforce Officer
in Zocalo v2.0
Just recently got a new laptop with XP Home installed, and have it on a wireless network with another computer with Win 2000 Pro, and there's just a few random issues that Google has yet to help me find answers to.
1. I've got some shared folders on the 2000 Pro computer that I want to map as network drives on the laptop. I can get it working fine, but for some reason, I'm required to input one of the user names/passwords from the 2000 computer in order to access it. I've tried going through the "access using a different user name" option when mapping the drive, but as soon as I reboot, it doesn't remember the password. Also, due to this, I have to close the stupid "couldn't reconnect all network drives" message every reboot.
2. Somewhat related to 1, is there any way to disable the network-related messages in the taskbar? What's irritating is that the wireless network takes a minute or two to get running (is this normal, btw?), so I get a bunch of little messages that just get irritating after a while ("no network available", "there is a network connection available", "connected to Home", etc"). How can I disable these?
3. How do I disable the tooltips in the start menu? I don't need to know that Internet Explorer is for opening web pages, thankyouverymuch, and the little yellow boxes get irritating (I like my computer experience to be as minimal as possible, if you couldn't tell :)).
I'm sure there's more that I'll think of later, but that's the best I've got right now. Any help would be much appreciated.
1. I've got some shared folders on the 2000 Pro computer that I want to map as network drives on the laptop. I can get it working fine, but for some reason, I'm required to input one of the user names/passwords from the 2000 computer in order to access it. I've tried going through the "access using a different user name" option when mapping the drive, but as soon as I reboot, it doesn't remember the password. Also, due to this, I have to close the stupid "couldn't reconnect all network drives" message every reboot.
2. Somewhat related to 1, is there any way to disable the network-related messages in the taskbar? What's irritating is that the wireless network takes a minute or two to get running (is this normal, btw?), so I get a bunch of little messages that just get irritating after a while ("no network available", "there is a network connection available", "connected to Home", etc"). How can I disable these?
3. How do I disable the tooltips in the start menu? I don't need to know that Internet Explorer is for opening web pages, thankyouverymuch, and the little yellow boxes get irritating (I like my computer experience to be as minimal as possible, if you couldn't tell :)).
I'm sure there's more that I'll think of later, but that's the best I've got right now. Any help would be much appreciated.
Comments
As for 2, you can disable balloon popups to get rid of those messages, but then you lose all other balloon popups as well (you're running low on disc space, new updates, etc). You need TweakUI to turn off the popups.
Start menu tooltips can probably be disabled with TweakUI.
TweakUI is a powertoy and can be found [url=http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp]here[/url].
[/quote]
Hm, I was afraid of that. If I remember correctly, I've got the same usernames set up on both machines, but no passwords required on the XP machine (and I wanted to keep it that way). The weird thing is that I input the required password when I first map the drive, but XP just forgets it as soon as I reboot. There's not a "remember this password" box to be found anywhere, either. What's the point of putting in the password when mapping the drive if it's not going to remember it past a reboot....
[quote]As for 2, you can disable balloon popups to get rid of those messages, but then you lose all other balloon popups as well (you're running low on disc space, new updates, etc). You need TweakUI to turn off the popups.
Start menu tooltips can probably be disabled with TweakUI.
[/quote]
Ah, I had forgotten about TweakUI!
I've tried poking around in the permissions for the shared folders, and all it lets me add are users on the same computer (which seems REALLY silly). When I try to add a user from the laptop (who would hopefully not require a name/pw to access the shared stuff), I get an error telling me that I can only add users from the domain listed in the "look in" pull-down menu (which only contains the Win2k computer, and is greyed out).
Ughhh. This really shouldn't be that hard. It's not like I'm even sharing any folders specific to certain users....
Unfortunately, setting up domains is really really really messy.
But in the permissions settings for a folder, there's an "add" button, which I assumed was for adding users, so I didn't have to specify "everybody", which it defaults to. When I click on the button, there's a big huge list of stuff like BATCH, DIALUP, INTERACTIVE, NETWORK, etc. Now what's the point of those if the sharing is mainly meant for use on the same computer?
What you need to do in that box is click "advanced", then click "find now". That should give you a list of all the users on your computer. add the ones you want, then set their permissions accordingly.
Does the "find" function search for users all over the network, or just on the local computer? What I need is to add a user from a DIFFERENT computer.
Why would somebody need to share anything with someone on the same computer, anyway? They're, you know, using the computer.
The find function just searches on the local computer unless you are on a domain, in which case it searches the domain. This is why you need to make the user names exactly the same on both computers. Basically, when you log into the computer that is sharing folders from another computer you log in with your current user name. If the serving computer can match that to a local username, you get those access rights. If it can't, you get the guest access rights (or no rights at all, as is usually the case).
The concept of sharing with someone on the local computer is so you can limit who can look at and change what on the hard drive. It's the same idea as permissions in Unix systems that stop users from deleting everything in /bin, or looking at other users' /home directories, for example.
This is in Win2000 professional.
If you look in the Add box, you'll see the option to add NETWORK as having permissions. I took this to mean that anybody on the network would be able to get the specified permissions to that resource, but it doesn't appear to work that way. What is it supposed to do?
What really irks me is that Windows, offers to remember every other password you use, but for some reason, doesn't offer the option to do so for shared stuff on a network...
[B][URL=http://w3.mivlmd.cablespeed.com/~shaun_gonzalez/Permissions.jpg]Ok, here's an image of the Permissions and Add stuff.[/URL]
This is in Win2000 professional.[/b][/quote]
I guess my memory is a bit flawed then. :)
[quote][b]If you look in the Add box, you'll see the option to add NETWORK as having permissions. I took this to mean that anybody on the network would be able to get the specified permissions to that resource, but it doesn't appear to work that way. What is it supposed to do?[/b][/quote]
I would guess it's meant to give those permissions to any users in the NETWORK user group. You'd need to add users to it in the computer adminstration panel, which you can get to through the control panel.
If I recall correctly (which has been proven to not always be the case), click the "Check Names" button to bring up the box where you can find all names on the system. I'm not sure why it's greyed out though.
[quote][b]What really irks me is that Windows, offers to remember every other password you use, but for some reason, doesn't offer the option to do so for shared stuff on a network... [/B][/QUOTE]
Probably a feeble attempt to be secure.
[/quote]
I can get to a screen where I can add the NETWORK thing to specific user groups on the computer (administrator, power user, etc), but I still can't find where to change what defines the NETWORK group (or any of the other ones, for that matter).
[quote]If I recall correctly (which has been proven to not always be the case), click the "Check Names" button to bring up the box where you can find all names on the system. I'm not sure why it's greyed out though.
[/quote]
Well, the "check names" thing only is clickable when I've actually got names in the box below. It just checks the typed names to see if they're all valid.
Sort of...
While it's not the prettiest solution, I did get it to do what I wanted. Pretty simple solution, too.
I just made a new user on the Win2k machine who had no password. I just give any sharing permissions for folders I want to map to drives to this user, then just set up the mapping on the XP machine to use HOME\DummyUser as the name to connect to the network drive as. Since there's no password required for that user, I never get the prompt, and am connected without a hitch!
[B]Pretty simple solution, too.
I just made a new user on the Win2k machine who had no password. I just give any sharing permissions for folders I want to map to drives to this user, then just set up the mapping on the XP machine to use HOME\DummyUser as the name to connect to the network drive as. Since there's no password required for that user, I never get the prompt, and am connected without a hitch! [/B][/QUOTE]
Only in windows would that be considered a pretty simple solution...Only in windows would that be logical...
I love it when you have to outsmart your own computer to make it do what you want :p