I know nothing about routers or firewalls except what they basically do. On my home system, I have 3 Windows XP pcs and 2 printers wire connected by 2 Linksys routers to share the internet access and the printers (one router also has wireless for my daughter's iPod access) . A friend "helper" helped me set this up several months ago and it worked fine. The second router was added so that we could add all this stuff to the "network". It worked fine.But I have replaced one of the pcs and my "friend" is not available to help me set it up again. I would like to request some help on configuring the built-in firewall of one or both routers to allow me to access documents on one pc with this new pc.1 person needs an answerI do too

I know nothing about routers or firewalls except what they basically do. On my home system, I have 3 Windows XP pcs and 2 printers wire connected by 2 Linksys routers to share the internet access and the printers (one router also has wireless for my daughter's iPod access) . A friend "helper" helped me set this up several months ago and it worked fine. The second router was added so that we could add all this stuff to the "network". It worked fine.But I have replaced one of the pcs and my "friend" is not available to help me set it up again. I would like to request some help on configuring the built-in firewall of one or both routers to allow me to access documents on one pc with this new pc.If I understand your setup correctly, you simply want to replace one of your computers that was connected by wire to one of the routers with another computer that will be connected by the same wire to the same router.You don't specify if the new computer also has Windows XP. You don't need to configure the firewallin the router . On the other hand, as you will see below, however, if you are using anon-Windows software firewall, you may have to configure that. If your replacement computer uses Windows XP, all you need do is follow this standard networking advice from MVP Malke:File/printer sharing For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on [the new machine] (see caveat in Item A below). Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a stateful firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying to create shares where the operating system does not permit it. A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN) traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a third-party firewall or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm Protection" (like Norton 2006/07) which acts as a firewall, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct subnet. Do not run more than one firewall. DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY. B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab. C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES. If you wish a machine to boot directly to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you can do this. The instructions at this link work for both XP and Vista: Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) - http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab). E. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users' home directories or Program Files, but you can share folders inside those directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder. See the first link above for details about Vista sharing. F. After you have file sharing working (and have tested this by exchanging a file between all machines), if you want to share a printer connected locally to one of your computers, share it out from that machine. Then go to the printer mftr.'s website and download the latest drivers for the correct operating system(s). Install them on the target machine(s). The printer should be seen during the installation routine. If it is not, install the drivers and then use the Add Printer Wizard. In some instances, certain printers need to be installed as Local printers but that is outside of this response.

Thanks for all of that input! I haven't studied it all or acted on it. I just wanted to tell you that both of these computers are Windows XP. One is Tablet Edition and one is Media Center Edition. But I do see in C in your reply that you say to "Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines". Oops, that hopefully isn't necessary. The tablet is mine and I have only my Jeff login with my standard password. On the Media Center machine, which is basically my kids pc, I use a login which has a different name (my name & my wife) and that same standard password. But my kids also have their own logins. Neither of my kids use passwords for their Windows login.The My Documents that I want to access from the tablet is under my login on the kids pc.

Hi Jeff, I'm going to chime in and see if I can help LemP get your problem resolved. First off for the router, if you can connect to the router, get an IP address assigned and access the internet, then most likely you don't need to do anything to the router to share files between computers on your LAN. [There are some router setups that this is not true for, but those are more advanced configurations, so lets hope your friend didn't go down that path for now] That leaves you with just configuring the windows sharing between the two machines, which LemP has provided info to get you going. Since we don't know what if any sharing setup has been done these machine, its not clear if you have all the info need to get you going. So, I'm going to through a little more at you. Here is a word document from Microsoft that I find quite helpful. It covers file sharing for XP, but doesn't get too technical. If you haven't setup file sharing before, I recommend taking a look at it. With your setup, you 'll want to be looking at 'Simple file sharing'.