Replies

Thanks again for your additional comments. In fact, today I did as an experiment what mercyh said: I went to my remote location, and logged into the router there. Then I found the “Routing Table Entry List” which listed the IP address for the “WAN Gateway”. Then I entered this IP address into my browser, and sure enough, the Control Panel for the main office router appeared after I entered the correct router username/password. Then I found the “DHCP Client Table” on the main office router which listed all the PC’s in the main office along with their IP address on the main router. But I couldn’t figure out how to go further. Is there a way from the remote location to enter the IP address of the main router, and then the IP address of an office PC in order to see/access the shared folders on that PC?

And more directly relevant to my original question is there an easy way to prevent that from happening? I don’t think it’s likely to happen since a casual user will not know the router username/password, but I’d still like to prevent it. mercyh mentioned a two router arrangement, although I would like to avoid adding another router. Paul T mentioned VLAN but I have to confess that I did not understand what he said. I think the question is: is there anything I can do to the main office router to ensure that one of the LAN ports is sent directly to the internet and is NOT accessible to/from any device (PC or Printer) attached to any other LAN ports (or connected wirelessly)?

Thanks again.

THanks, Paul, for your comments. I really would like to understand what’s going on, so if you have time to explain it in the next few days, that would be great. If there is some simple tutorial I can look at, I would be glad to do that too.

Thanks again.

Thanks to all who responded. I’m sorry that I’m not very experienced in setting up networks. It’s not clear to me what a subnet is so I suspect it’s not present. All I did was plug the cables in.

I can say, however, that when I select “View Workgroup Computers” (on XP) on a PC at the remote site, no PC from the main site appears, so it’s not clear to me how the common workgroup name could be the problem (I AM using workgroups, not domains). Similarly, even when I type the network address (for the main office PC’s) in the browser bar at the remote site, the PC at the remote site doesn’t find the main office PC’s. Is there some other way to make or find a connection from the remote PC to the office PC’s?

I’m also hazy about static IP’s, although I suspect this is the case for the networked printers, but I’m not sure how to tell. To set up these printers, all I did was run a utility provided by Canon and everything worked after that.

In any event, the question that remains for me is how does the PC at the remote site access the home office printers, but cannot apparently even see the home office PC’s.

Thanks for any further thoughts and suggestions.

Well, OK, thanks for all the comments about other backup programs. But I was trying to use Fred Langa’s system because it used the Windows 7 programs which were already there on my system, and I wouldn’t have to obtain and figure out a third party program. So my questions are still:
1. Does the Windows 7 system image include a current version of the user data? I assume yes, but it wasn’t quite clear to me.
2. Is there any way to test this system image besides a complete (destructive) reinstall?
Of course, if the Windows 7 system image programs aren’t used very much, then maybe nobody knows, but I assumed that they WERE used quite a bit, even though there are lots of other options.

Thanks for any further comments.

HI, Roderunner, and thanks for your response.
I also have copies of my data files by other means, so I’m not focused on data recovery at the moment. Instead my goal is to have an image backup that I can use in case the disk crashes, or Windows 7 becomes so corrupted that it won’t load (this happened to me a couple of times with Windows XP).

When you said that your recoveries are done WITHOUT a recovery disk, did you mean a DATA recovery, which would just be copying files from elsewhere? I assume that you would need a recovery disk of some sort if the system wouldn’t boot and you actually had to load a system image from elsewhere. Is that correct?

Thanks again.

I will check the Event Logs and the MSRT log, but I’m not sure how or where to look for “security software logs.” Can you give me any more direction for that? Thanks !

Dumb question I know but here it is: the Outlook Express folder in Program Files on my XP machine has five .exe files and six .dll files. What happens if this folder is copied to a Windows 7 machine and then the .exe files are run there? Windows 7 is SUPPOSED to run XP programs isn’t it?

Is there an evaluation/comparison somewhere on the web of simple, fast, clean replacements for Outlook Express that can be used on Windows 7?

I also prefer Outlook Express rather than Outlook for home use. My wife uses Outlook at her office and I find it cumbersome and unhandy. I didn’t know anybody else preferred OE !!

Does it seem that Storage Spaces will be able to correctly handle off line backup storage? That is, will it be possible to remove an external hard drive for offline storage with all data intact and accessible?

I have long had the same question as the original questioner – how can I learn about VBA after years of FORTRAN, RPG, BASIC, and COBOL programming. But then I wondered if it was really necessary or worth the effort, especially for short simple programs to accomplish a simple task. Maybe this is off topic, but is a site and language like FreeBASIC, ( http://www.freebasic.net/ ) sufficient to accomplish simple programming tasks, or would the effort spent to understand FreeBasic be better spent working (again) at VBA? Thanks for any comments, or should I start a new topic for this question?

This discussion and confusion is one reason why I have avoided both Public Folders and Libraries. It’s not immediately clear what they do or how the sharing works. Instead, I simply create a folder when necessary and set the permissions specifically. Then I always know what is shared and who it is shared with.

Fred’s article about the no-reformat reinstall said that I would need the “standard Win7 installation DVD.”

I bought a Dell laptop and Dell included a disk labelled “Operating System – Already installed on your computer – Reinstallation DVD Windows 7 Professional 64-bit”.

Is this what I need to follow Fred’s procedure? Is there any way to tell for sure? And if it IS what I want, then can this DVD be copied?

Thanks !

I have MS Outlook 2003 running on three PC’s on a small office LAN (two using Windows 7 and one still on Windows XP Pro). The main .PST file is located on the primary PC in a shared folder. This means that all email comes into one email address and then is moved to each users subfolder based on message rules. This arrangement has the advantage that all users have their own subfolder but can also easily view email going to other users if necessary (we don’t have to worry about security problems between users). The only disadvantage is that only one user can access the main .PST file at a time. I would like to enable simultaneous access but suspect that it’s not possible. Having a .PST on a shared network folder has not caused a problem in the five years or so that we have done this. Not sure if this is what you want, but it works for us.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll be trying to organize the possibilities next week. Any other suggestions are still welcome. Just to clarify: in order to change from Sharepoint Designer, I want to be as sure as I can that a new option actually is easier, especially for a non-technical user. If it’s not free, then that’s even more important. It’s true that there are dozens of options; is there a review article anywhere that focuses on ease/simplicity of use?