Moving laptop from work network to home network

4 Oct 2006 12:05 PM

Rick

I have a small home office network with 2 computers set up for file sharing
and printer sharing. The network is connected by a LINKSYS router and
defined using a workgroup name. Both computers are running XP. I use my
work laptop as one of these computers.

My office just went to MS Small Business Server and we are now on a domain.
The network folks at work set me up in the domain and all is working fine in
the office, however, when I bring the laptop home I now cannot see the
network. In order to see the network I need to change my network settings
form 'domain" to my home "workgroup". How can I set up different profiles or
log-ins to make this process easier to manage?

4 Oct 2006 12:40 PM

Sooner Al [MVP]

There is a program called NetSwitcher that may work for you...

http://www.netswitcher.com

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Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
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"Rick" <R***@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:CFFD9F02-ADDE-44D6-8E4F-29CD6C9EA97E@microsoft.com...
>I have a small home office network with 2 computers set up for file sharing
> and printer sharing. The network is connected by a LINKSYS router and
> defined using a workgroup name. Both computers are running XP. I use my
> work laptop as one of these computers.
>
> My office just went to MS Small Business Server and we are now on a
> domain.
> The network folks at work set me up in the domain and all is working fine
> in
> the office, however, when I bring the laptop home I now cannot see the
> network. In order to see the network I need to change my network settings
> form 'domain" to my home "workgroup". How can I set up different profiles
> or
> log-ins to make this process easier to manage?
>

4 Oct 2006 2:18 PM

Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]

In news:CFFD9F02-ADDE-44D6-8E4F-29CD6C9EA97E@microsoft.com,

Rick <R***@discussions.microsoft.com> typed:

> I have a small home office network with 2 computers set up for file
> sharing and printer sharing. The network is connected by a LINKSYS
> router and defined using a workgroup name. Both computers are
> running XP. I use my work laptop as one of these computers.
>
> My office just went to MS Small Business Server and we are now on a
> domain. The network folks at work set me up in the domain and all is
> working fine in the office, however, when I bring the laptop home I
> now cannot see the network. In order to see the network I need to
> change my network settings form 'domain" to my home "workgroup".

Do not do that! You will make yourself, and your IT staff, unhappy. Don't
touch your network settings.

> How
> can I set up different profiles or log-ins to make this process
> easier to manage?

Without third party software such as Sooner Al described, there is no way to
do this. However, you do not need third party software.

I'm presuming you've got DHCP set up in each location, right? So, you get an
IP address on the home network, just as you get an IP address when you
connect on your work network.

You don't need to change to a workgroup just to access resources on it. You
shouldn't play with your laptop's network settings at all, frankly (see
"unhappy" comment above).

Once you've logged into the laptop using your domain account (using cached
credentials), and have an IP address on the home network, you can map
drives, use printers, whatnot, very easily. One way is via a command line:

net use x: \\computername\sharename /user:computername\username <enter>