Important Direct Cable Connection Notes

This page was designed to provide some notes on Direct Cable Connection (File-transfer) of Win9x/ME/2000 with LAPLINK (Printer port) Cable or Null-Modem (serial port) Cable. We've already analysed extensively Serial Direct Transfer, Parallel Direct Transfer , Network (Cross-over) Transfer and USB Transfer methods in previous articles. For more information on Network cabling, transfer methods, speeds, specifications and more, visit our Network Cabling section.

I've successfully used Laplink cable to link two PCs for FILE TRANSFER only (not playing Games), with WIN95 and Direct Cable Connection program using the NetBeui protocol on each computer. You can quickly check to see if the protocol is installed by doubleclicking on the "Network Section" in Control Panel of your Windows operating system.

In addition to the above, you must have installed "Client for Microsoft Networks", "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" and optionally the TCP/IP protocol, which will require some configuration. Providing a simply IP Address and subnetmask will be enough for our purposes, the rest of the fields can be ignored. If you would like to allow users to access your files and printer, then ensure both the options in "File and Print Sharing" are selected.

Once you have completed the above steps, you should have the following listed in the "Network Selection" window::

• Client for Microsoft Networks
• TCP/IP
• Netbeui
• File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks

Once your changes are complete, Windows might prompt you to reboot the system, so make sure all work is saved before answering "yes"!

You should also share the Disks on both computers by right-clicking on the selected disks installed in your system and select the "Sharing" option that will appear in the menu. You can access them via your "My Computer" icon on your desktop.

After you complete these actions, you will see a blue hand "holding" your shared drives, indicating that the drive is shared with the rest of the network!

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