After you connect your computer to a network, you can share files, printers, and electronic mail with other computers. This chapter helps you to set up a network, and introduces some common network uses.

Most computers are set up to use a network during installation. If you did not set up your computer to use a network during installation, you can set it up now using the Network tool in Control Panel.

Be sure your network hardware components (network adapter, network card, cables, and other devices) are correctly installed before setting up network software.

There may be times when you may need to change or add new network software or hardware, including services, protocols, binding, and network adapter cards. You use the Network tool in Control Panel to make these changes.

To update or upgrade an existing component’s driver:

Select the appropriate tab, and click Update. You will be prompted to insert a disk with the new driver on it.

To see files and directories on computers on your network or domain, double-click the Network Neighborhood icon on your desktop.

The first icon on the list is Entire Network.

Double-click this icon to see all of the Network providers or other domains and networks that are on your entire network. The entire network is determined by your system administrator.

You can share files and folders with other people on the network.

Other people are now able to view the contents of your shared folder.

To connect to a printer on your network or setup a printer attached to a computer, use the Add Printer wizard, a step-by-step printer setup program. You can designate the printer that you would like to connect to by entering the printer’s path, or you can browse for a printer in Network Neighborhood and then double-click its icon to set it up.

You can share any printers connected to your computer with other people on your network.

You can use Explorer to see what is on the network drives that you are connected to. Explorer gives you a view of the network’s contents in a hierarchy, or tree. You can view the contents of any network drives you are connected to, as well as any drives and folders on your computer.

With Dial-Up Networking, you can use a modem to access shared resources such as files or printers on another network.

With User Manager, you can create and manage user accounts and groups, and control security policies such as user rights and auditing policies.

The actions that you can perform in User Manager are determined by your user rights. User rights are determined by the groups to which your user account belongs. Windows NT provides you with default groups that are automatically installed on your computer. These groups, called built-in groups, define a collection of rights and permissions for the user accounts that are its members.

Some built-in groups are:

A member of the Administrators group can perform all User Manager functions.

A member of the Power Users group can use User Manager to create user accounts and groups, and modify and delete those user accounts and groups. A Power User can also add and remove users from the Power Users, Users, and Guests groups.

A user who is logged on to a user account which is a member of the Users group can create groups, modify or delete those groups, and give any user account membership in those groups.

A user account consists of information about the user. This includes information such as the user’s name and the password required for the user to log on to the system, as well as the rights and permissions the user has for using the system and accessing its resources.

Some built-in user accounts are:

The Administrator account is the account used by the person who manages the workstation’s overall configuration. The Administrator user controls all aspects of the Windows NT computer.

A Guest user can create files and delete those files, and read files that an administrator specifically permits Guests to read.

The Guest account is provided as a convenience so that occasional or one-time users of the computer can log on and be granted limited accessibility. The Guest account is installed with a blank password.

Groups are collections of user accounts. Giving a user account membership in a group gives that user all the rights and permissions that have been granted to the group. This provides an easy way to grant common capabilities to sets of users.

You can manage three different security policies with User Manager.

The Account policy controls the way passwords must be used by all user accounts, and whether user accounts are locked out when they have too many bad logon attempts within a period of time.

The User Rights Policy controls the rights assigned to groups and user accounts.

The Audit Policy defines the security events that will be audited.

Using the Internet, you can gain access to, provide, and exchange an almost limitless array of information.

Before you can connect to the Internet, verify that you have access to the Internet. If you are already on a network, check with your network administrator to see if you already have access to an Internet gateway. Otherwise, you need to choose an Internet Service Provider. An Internet Service Provider is a company that enables remote user access to the Internet.

Windows NT lets you connect to an Internet Service Provider or other online service over a phone line or Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line.

There are two ways you can connect to the Internet:

The most popular method is PPP.

Before you connect to the Internet, you need the following items:

The Microsoft Peer Web Services for Windows NT Workstation is designed for personal Web publishing from computers running Windows NT Workstation. With Peer Web Services, you can set up a personal Web server to run on your company’s intranet, which is ideal for development, testing, and peer-to-peer publishing.

After you have installed Windows NT Workstation, you can install Peer Web Services from the Network icon in Control Panel. If you already have the necessary Internet or intranet connection, you can accept all of the default settings during Setup and then add your Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) content files to the \Wwwroot directory. Your files will be immediately available to users. The default Setup configurations are suitable for many publishing scenarios without any further modifications.

You configure and administer Peer Web Services through the Internet Service Manager tool.

For details about configuration and administration, see the product documentation. For details about each property sheet or dialog box, click the Help button on the specific property sheet or dialog box.

The product documentation is installed along with Peer Web Services and is in HTML format.

You can share information with other people who are using online services using Windows Messaging, an electronic mail system. With Windows Messaging, you can send and receive electronic mail and use Internet services.

If you did not install Windows Messaging with Windows NT, you can install it using the Add/Remove Programs icon in Control Panel. You can also double-click the Inbox icon on the desktop, and you will be prompted to install Windows Messaging.

When Windows Messaging starts, it displays the Viewer. The Viewer is the central location in Windows Messaging where you send and receive electronic mail and organize information. The left side of the Viewer displays folders, and the right side displays the contents of an open folder. The following figure shows the contents of an Inbox displayed in the Viewer.

The menus contain all the Windows Messaging commands. Click a menu name to display its commands.

The toolbar provides buttons to perform common tasks. To find out what a toolbar button does, position your pointer over the button for a moment and a ToolTip will appear.

The folder list contains your sets of personal folders. You can create one or more sets of personal folders. It also includes an Inbox folder for new messages, an Outbox folder for messages you send, and a Deleted folder for deleted messages.