How to Convert a Computer Into a File Server

Series Summary

Computers are complex machines built upon very simple principles. They perform arithmetical operations millions of times over to transform digital information moving at lightning speed into usable human data. A personal computer's job is to help a user create, manipulate, deliver, receive or delete media content. This is a simple, sterile definition that sounds uninteresting on the surface. Nevertheless, these fundamental functions mimic human ability in some surprising ways. Therefore, the computer is increasingly becoming an engine of the imagination, a platform for the digital life. In this free video series on computer help, an experienced computer programmer demonstrates several tips for PC use. Learn to convert a computer into a file server by setting up a file share, and find out how to connect to a remote computer using both Telnet and HyperTerminal. Change the default printer on a PC, and change the themes and skins in Windows Vista. For both simple and more complex tasks, use these simple steps for PC troubleshooting.

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Dave Andrews and, today, I'm going to show you how to convert a computer into a file server. In your home network, there's, the only thing that you need to do to make sure you that you can convert a computer into a file server, is to give it a static IP which you know won't change, so I'm going to show you how to do that first. Let's go to our server computer and we're going to click on the Start button and go to Control Panel. Select Network Connections, let's right click on Local Area Connection, go to Properties. The one we want to select is Internet Protocol TCP/IP, click it and select Properties and we want to give it a static IP. If we did not give it a static IP, it's possible that the connection could be lost. So let's give it a IP of192 168 1.53. The sub link mask will be filled in automatically and the default gateway is going to be the IP of the router that runs your home network. In most cases, it's 192 168 1.1. Let's do the same thing for Preferred DNS, 192 168 1.1. So this computer's connection IP is going to be 192 168 1.53. And that's what we're going to use to talk to it. So let's press okay. Our file server has been set up. Let's go to a client PC now. And, since this server is not going to change, we want to just go ahead and map a network drive to it. The way to do that is to click on the Start bar down on the bottom in Vista it's called Computer and in XP it says My Computer, right click on it and go to Map Network Drive. We can select a drive letter for this. Just like a C drive would be a hard drive, a D drive would be your CD drive. We're going to use drive Z. For folder, type in two back slashes, just like you would do http:// to go the Internet. We'll do two backward leaning slashes to tell the computer to go out on the network. And we're going to say 192.168.1.53, which is the address of the computer and we're going to do the slash again and we're going to say shared, which is the name of the file sharer we created. Click finish to map the drive and it pops right up, the files we just shared on the server PC."