______________________________________________________________ Please include this message in your reply so that it contains my antispam and antivirus password (www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org). Thank you! ______________________________________________________________ Hi Inge I'm pretty new at home networking too, but maybe i can help a bit, at least by preventing you from wasting time for the same reasons i did. Actually i've had a 98 + 95 network for a few years already, but i didn't set that up. I chickened out and paid my ISP to install that together with the broadband when i heard how many hours, days, and nerves often get wasted with network problems. When i bought my new XP (i still regret not buying a Mac! -- but i'll be getting Linux soon), i thought i'd just try and see if the MS hype about XP and easy networking is true. Haha, a good example of M$ lies. They discontinued support of the excellent, tried, problem-free, and (if i remember the experts correctly) automatically self-configuring NetBEUI protocol so far used in Windows and expect you to undo all settings and protocols in older MS(!) machines if you want to connect an XP to them. You probably know this, and probably also that the experts are furious that MS chose the same protocol (TCP/IP) for file sharing that is used in the Internet. This makes it quite easy for hackers to break into many computers, depending on the hardware configurations. (And as you also probably know, the XP firewall is a bad joke since it only controls traffic in; you'll never know if you've got a trojan sending out thousands of spam emails a day.) Before you do anything else, make sure you always restart *all* computers *individually* even if you changed a setting on only one of them. Next bet would be to disable all firewalls, and since ZoneAlarm is notoriously autonomous and badly designed (seriously consider switching to Sygate -- it's free and much better), you might save a lot of wasted time by *temporarily* uninstalling it to make sure it's not doing something despite being "disabled" that prevents the PC from seeing the laptop. Next, tell us what operating systems and what hardware (routers, modems etc.) you have. Take a look at homenethelp.com; their diagrams can help even though, for example, my case of a combined ADSL modem + router is missing. This would be your safest bet in every sense of the word, i.e. safe, foolproof, and fairly easy: http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/HomeNet-config.asp Make sure you understand the words of caution (i didn't since my example was not in the diagrams, and pictures make you think nothing else is possible) before you proceed with this method: http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/net.asp If you have too much time on your hands, you might want to read about one example of how i've been wasting my time with badly designed guides for networking newbies and with techies with minimal people and communication skills: http://forums.practicallynetworked.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=9981#post9981. If i'd known this was going to be such a hell and require so much time, i'd have paid someone to do it for me. Instead, i wasted most of my vacation on this! Ekhart ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unexplored, unpredictable emotions control our lives, whether we like it or not. That’s why, seen from outside, we act so foolishly, why we are continually making the wrong decisions. This is called life. - Kati Outinen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inge wrote: > I am trying my hands at networking for the first time, connecting my laptop > computer to my main computer. Everything is well. I connected the router and > both computers are connected to the internet. I am able to access the laptop > from the main computer without problem. However, when I want to access the > main computer from the laptop the main computer will not let me get there. > > I have been running Zone Alarm Pro on both computers. Since the router does > have a firewall in it could there be a conflict with Zone Alarm? If that is > the case, would it be safe to shut off Zone Alarm? I do not want to > uninstall Zone Alarm. I definitely will be running the laptop away from home > without the router and feel that I need Zone Alarm for protection. > > What should I do, please????? > > Inge Pshebnicki > Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada Regards, John Durham (list moderator) <http://modecideas.com/contact.html?sig> Freelists login at http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi List archives at http://www.freelists.org/archives/pchelpers PC-HELPERS list subscribe/unsub at http://modecideas.com/discuss.htm?sig Good advice is like good paint- it only works if applied.