Somewhat of a follow up to my post from last week. I'm probably going with a router but I still have the switch I bought and did manage to get the computers to talk to eachother. I'm able to ping each. In network neighborhood I see each PC and am able to log in to the host and guest from eachother. Problem is...all that shows up is the printer Icon when accessing guest from host...and Printer and fax/modem icon when accessing host from guest. I see no drives folders or files to share in network neighborhood other than the printer. No additional drives appear in My Computer either other than those in the local PC. I checked properties for each drive partition in My computer and they are all set to allow sharing. The only thing not checked off now in connections is Internet sharing (ICS) and I tried that too and it didnt work. I'm merely testing at this point and not concerned with internet connection sharing at the moment...just file xfer between PCs. I do want to buy a router and return this switch but am I actually going to be able to see drives and share files with the router or will I have the same limited access as I do with this switch? I'm router shopping now....but ....technically I should be able to share files between PCs with this switch shouldn't I? Am I doing something wrong or is print sharing the only access I'm going to have with the switch? Any suggestions and help appreciated. Dave

Whether you use a router with a builtin switch or just a switch has no bearing on your file sharing. Just because you install file and print sharing does not mean you automatically share resources. It's the first step in many. For example a shared drive doesn't show up in My Computer until you use explorer and drive map a letter to the share and check the box reconnect at logon. I would suggest some time spent in Help and Support on the subjects of file and print sharing would be a good start to getting your system the way you want. Give a person a fish you feed them for a day. Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

I had a feeling that whether router or switch I'd have the same access until I did further setup. I right clicked on my computer and was looking at network mapping but wasnt sure I'd need to do that. I'll check the help section and do some googling regarding network file sharing and drive mapping. Thanks for the fast reply. Dave

Got the PCs to share files. Figured I'd post the result to help others searching for this topic. I had set Drive partitions to share BUT did not realize that the partitions themselves will not show in the other PC. I thought once Partitions were set to share everything in them would as well. Turns out folders need to be set to allow sharing as well. I now see the folders I allowed to share appearing in the guest PC. Learn something new every day...