XP Network upgraded to Windows 7

Hey everyone,

I'm hoping someone could help me with this little project. Might be pretty basic, but I've never done anything this "big".

I have a buddy with a 5 computer network, part of his business. Basically, all 5 are networked to these Drives, I guess shared drives off one of the computers.

If i was to go in, back up all the hard files, i.e. word, excel documents and other sorts, and format these computers to Windows 7. How would I go about rebuilding these shared drives, and put back all the information to them? Any extra advice on how to tackle this project would be great!

Thanks guys!

 

So you've got 5 computers. Are they connected via a network switch? On one of the computers you have a shared drive. Is it an external drive or an internal drive?

If external: You don't need to do anything to back it up. you can disconnect it from the computer it's on, install windows 7, then connect it back up and share it.

If internal: you will need to back it up on some sort of external media, install windows 7, then copy back from the external media to the new drive/folder. Then you will need to share that folder with the rest of the network.

 

It's a pretty basic network, wireless router with 3 connected via ethernet, and 2 on wireless. One of the comps when you open "My Computer" displays about 5 different drives, I'm guessing all on the same hard drive.

I have a terrabyte that I save all the info on these drives on. But how would I go about recreating these shared drives? Thanks for your help!

 

If there is nothing connected externally to this machine then the "drives" are probably just shared folders on that computers drive. To share a folder, you right click it, click properties, click on the sharing tab, click share and it will walk you through sharing the folder. You would need to do that with each folder that it shared. After you install Windows 7, you will need to create the folders again, copy the data to them, then follow the directions above to share it on the network.

 

Don't know much about networking, but with the amount of time I have spent on my laptop I can tell you that every single person I've known who has made the switch to Windows 7 has been FAR happier with it. I personally love it.

 

Depending on what you hope to achieve, there are different options (isn't this always the case? )


OPTION 1:
This is the traditional way and probably the most flexible. If you introduced a computer to your network that was running an older version of Windows or was on a non-Windows operating system, this setup would have the foundation in place.

First, how to create shares. It talks about sharing Win7 to XP, but the principles are the same from the client computer's aspect.

Second, how to map a network drive. The process is identical for all Windows versions.

OPTION 2:

Windows 7 introduces homegroups. I haven't played with it yet myself, but it's kind of like having a wizard that takes care of the process. Unfortunately, homegroups are only for Windows 7 machines.

How to create a homegroup

 

Thanks for the help guys!

Here's another question:

On the newly formatted computer, I see the shared drives from the others. However, when opened it says access denied. How do I get permission?

 

Windows 7 is a bit more secure than XP at defaults and you might have to adjust some settings in the Network and Sharing Center to enable sharing.

First thing to check is that your new client computer is a member of the same workgroup as the target machines.

You'll also need to determine the target computer shared drive's sharing method and permissions. If share permissions are given to specific users, the client computer must access the share with the same username and password as used on the target.