Scottie's Tech.Info

Let’s say you have a network of more than ten Windows computers connected in a local workgroup without a domain controller. One of the computers has a printer connected to it, and more than ten machines in the workgroup need to print at the same time.

Well, you might say, “Dude, get a server!” or “Dude, get a print server!”

True, that would solve the problem… But sometimes, things like money and technical knowledge are limiting factors in such cases.

The good news: It’s actually really easy to increase the limit and get everybody printing/sharing files in a very short time!

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Scottie Networking LAN, network, windows

Here’s a little problem that drove me crazy: How do you determine the Master Browser in a Windows Workgroup?

First of all, lemme explain a bit about how a workgroup works. When you have a LAN set up running Windows machines, each machine can see all the others in Network Neighborhood (or just “Network” in Vista). If you want to see the files on another machine, you just go to Network Neighborhood, click, et voila!

The other method you can use is to open Windows Explorer (keyboard shortcut: Win-E) and in the location/address bar, type:

\\COMPUTER-NAME

So, if you want to go to the computer called BALTHAZAR, you’d type:

\\BALTHAZAR

And hit enter. This is handy to know if Network Neighborhood is not working. And a grumpy Network Neighborhood is exactly the reason why sometimes, you need to find out which computer is the Master Browser.

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Scottie Networking LAN, Master Browser, MSBROWSE, network, windows