How to Share Folders and Printers on Your Network (Win 7)?


What is sharing?

network-sharingA service in Microsoft Windows enables dedicated files to be visible and accessible to other computers on a Network.

What is the benefit of Sharing?

If this service is enabled, you can access other’s dedicated files, hard disk drives or to print documents using a printer connected to one PC in the network using any other computers on the same network.

How to enable Sharing on my computer?

First of all you need to check if this feature is installed on your Windows or not in order to enable it, to do that follow the below steps:

[scheaven_infobox color=”grey” width=”100″ align=”left” icon=”info2″]Note: This service is not required on client computers (the computers that accessing the shared files on the same network)[infoclose color=”grey”]
  • Click on Start menu, select Control Panel and from “Network and Internet” section click on “View Network Status and Tasks”

  • From the top left of the next window click on “Change Adapter Settings” to see if the service is installed or not

  • Double click on the network card icon (you’re using for your network) and click on properties button from the new window.

  • From the “Network” tab, check if the “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Network” is there or not (as shown in the picture), if not click on install button.

  • Select Service and click on Add button

  • Select “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Network” and click on Ok.

  • Now to enable this service click on Start menu, select Control Panel and from “Network and Internet” section click on “Choose homegroup and Sharing options”

  • Click on “Change advanced Sharing settings” from the next window

  • Select all the shown options to “Turn on..” and click on Save changes button.

This article also available for :

Windows XP

Windows Vista

Firas Sameer

This is me Firas Sameer the founder of Dealing With Windows, I am a computer and telecommunication engineer with over 14 years of experience, I love helping people and I love spending some of my free time posting useful articles for free about Microsoft windows.

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