Hands on: Vista networking

Having resisted for some time the urge to start investigating Vista, I’ve recently added a couple of Vista PCs to my network.

It wasn’t particularly difficult, but there are a few changes to the networking options that could catch you out – especially if, like me, you’re looking to connect a Vista PC to a network that contains a mix of earlier Windows and Linux systems.

A different workgroup
If you’re an XP Home user, one of the first things that could trip you up is the dropping of MSHOME as a default workgroup name. Instead, WORKGROUP (the default in XP Professional) is now used on all Windows Vista implementations.

It’s not a huge issue, as computers don’t have to be in the same workgroup to share files and printers – it’s just a lot easier if they are. And it’s not that hard to change although, if you’re new to Vista, finding out how to go about it can take a while.

The easiest way is to go to the desktop Start menu, right-click on the Computer option and select Properties from the pop-up menu. A window will open containing basic information about your computer setup with, at the top, the version of Windows Vista being run. In my test I’ve used Windows Vista Business, but if you’re using another version the same basic networking options covered here should all be available.

When you’ve got to the window titled 'View basic information about your computer' open, you’ll see the current computer name, domain and workgroup settings, with a Change Settings option alongside. Click this and (once you’ve okayed it with Vista security) a familiar System Properties window will appear, from which you can change the computer name and workgroup, just as on Windows XP.

What you type in here is up to you. If all your other PCs are set to use the MSHOME workgroup, you’ll probably want to stick with that rather than change them all to use WORKGROUP. However, I prefer to use a name of my own devising rather than the defaults used by Microsoft, and would recommend you do the same.

Browsing the network
You’ll see another big difference when you try to browse the network from a Vista PC. When you go back to the Start menu and click on the Network entry to browse the Lan, you are told that Network discovery is turned off so you can’t see any network computers or devices.

Again, this is easy to change. Click on the error message and take the option to turn on network discovery. Alternatively, from the Start menu, right-click Network and select Properties from the pop-up menu to get to the Network and Sharing Center (pictured above). There you can change not only the Network discovery setting but other networking options too.

When you first turn on Network discovery, you’ll be asked whether to do this for all public networks or to make the network you’re connected to private. The private option is the one to go for if you’re connected to either a home or workplace Lan. If you choose the wrong setting you can change the type of network later, also from the Network and Sharing Center.

Once Network discovery has been enabled, you should be able to browse the network in much the same way as on a Windows XP PC, and you’ll be able to map network drives, set shortcuts and so on. The Windows firewall will have been automatically updated to allow the necessary protocols through, and browsing should be a lot faster on an all-Vista network than with XP and previous versions of Windows. On a mixed network, however, it can take a while for Windows to work out exactly what’s out there.