hello again as you know I'm Eli the computer guy today's class is introduction to Windows workgroups so we're going to talk about creating a little Windows workgroup network now this is in this server track so you may be may be thinking you know Eli why are we learning about workgroups I want to learn about servers this is a server track well remember as we talked about before and one of the first introductory classes to this track is technically a server is any computer on the network that provides services to another computer so if you have a folder that is shared on your computer and somebody accesses it your computer is now a server if you have a printer that is plugged into the back of your computer and your buddy is able to print to it from his computer then that is a printer server so although you're you're just sitting there you're typing on the computer and using Word or Adobe or Mozilla Firefox that is still a server of sorts it's not it's not one of the big fancy enterprise classes servers but but in the computer world that that is still a server now work groups are a much-maligned thing in the technology world because you know geeks us we always want to work with it a bigger better faster fancier equipment so if our client comes to us or if our boss comes to us and says they want a server what we want to do instinctually we just say great we get on the devil's website or ibm's website or HP's website we spec out this massive five thousand dollar server with Windows 2008 server data center Edition raid and all this kind of garbage and and we give that to our bosses and it is the proposal so they come to us and they say they need a little database or a little web server or or a file server and they get back this $5,000 proposal because that's a server well that doesn't do a lot of service for anybody because if all your client or your boss needs is a little file server you can provide them a little file server within a workgroup architecture for 500 or 800 or $1000 installed versus $5,000 for this monstrosity of a server that they they are never ever ever in their lives ever going to come close to hitting the capacity up why this is important is again to the computer professionals to technologists we we look at the world and we want to play with our toys that's something that managers always laugh at when I'm a computer guy and I'm doing stuff as I talk about the toys because stuff is fun you know technology is is toys to us we get to play at work well managers business people all they care about our solutions and the price for those solutions so if they come to you and they say they have five thousand dollars to spend on this project and then you give them a five thousand dollar server well they'll be happy enough the next time you want to do something you may or may not get the approval to do it but here is where you can make yourself a friend of management and then in return management will become a friend of you if they come to you and they say they need a file server and they're willing to spend five thousand dollars for you can either give them a five thousand dollar server and you know what happens happens but if they don't really need a five thousand dollar server if you can come back to them and you can say for 600 or $800 I can have a server installed for you that will do everything everything you genuinely wanted to do it provides the solution not a bit less it provides a solution for eight hundred dollars they are going to be overjoyed they're going to be happy they're going to be excited and they are going to love you but why this is important is because the next time they come to you and they have a project and they say this project we have budgeted five thousand dollars for well you may look at that project it might be a voice over IP system or surveillance system or something a little more high-tech and you go hey Bob you're not gonna be able to get this for five thousand dollars even if we could to install this for $5,000 it's not going to do what you want this will not serve $5,000 you're not going to buy a system that provides you the solution that you want well if we took the first scenario when when the client asked for a file server and you spent the $5,000 at this point they're going to go hmm they're not going to know whether to trust you or not and the project may go forward and may not go forward or they may even force you to buy some $5,000 piece of crap system because all they want to spend is $5,000 well here's the thing if before they've asked for a file server or simple server you would install this 800 dollar system it worked magnificently because that's all they needed well when they put this this project in front of you and they said budget is only five thousand dollars we can look at them and say hey Bob Bob Bob Bob I would love to do this for you but you cannot buy have this solution install for five thousand dollars it can't be done it's got cost you eight thousand dollars I'm sorry but that's the way it is and they're gonna look at you and they're gonna be suspicions like what do you mean us got cost $8,000 I've already spent five thousand but here's the thing you can look them you can look at them straight in the eye you can say remember when you came to me last time and you're willing to spend five thousand dollars of project and you only spent eight hundred they're gonna say yeah yo well I told you before that all you needed to spend on this project was $800 you can have spent five thousand this project that you now have given me you need to spend eight thousand you have to come up with that additional three thousand that's just the way it is I've been an honest broker with you before I save you money now you're going to need to spend more money and a business manager a businessman will appreciate that and the chances are you will get that extra three thousand dollars you'll get the full however much you need for the project and everybody will be happier so that's that's how things like like work groups and how selling products either again to your clients or to your boss in the real world can really affect the resources that you get in the future so again work groups if you have a huge network if you have a hundred computers and you have lots of security policies and all no don't do a workgroup but if you have a five or ten person office you need to share a few files you need to share a printer to work groups can do absolutely everything that you need and even if you do buy a little dedicated computer you can go out and buy that crappy little three hundred dollar a machine and everybody will be happy with the solution so that's the introduction to this that's why workgroups can be very important again a lot of technicians overlook them they don't want to install them because they're not fancy and complicated and expensive but you don't always need fancy complicated and expensive solutions so so give me a second and we'll dive into Windows workgroups so let's take a moment to simply define what a workgroup is to make sure we're all on the same page so we work group is a number of computers that are connected together on the lam so the internal network that are logically grouped so so to diagram this out imagine we have a have a switch right here and you have computers that connected to the switch however many computers you want to have connected to this way so this is the LAN the local area network now let's say for whatever reason you want to you want to group computers into different workgroups you want them logically separated some other computers over here so you have let's say you have workgroup 1 and you have workgroup - so in the side of the network properties of your computer whether you have XP or 7 or Vista etc you can set what workgroup your computer belongs to so let's say these computers over here are connected workgroup 1 and these computers over here are connected to 2 now what happens when you go in to your network management console there's a used to be whole network neighborhood now it's called then it was called my network places and Microsoft keeps changing the name of this thing so I'm not exactly sure exactly what it's called right now but again I used be networked neighborhood that it was my network places now it's something else I'll believe well when you go into that to look at the local networks you will need now see instead of seeing all these computers you'll see workgroup 1 NC workgroup 2 now if you double-click on the icon for workgroup 1 you will then see the computer hands for these computers if you double click on the icon for workgroup 2 you will then see the names for these computers so it's basically is a logical way to debye it up computers on the network so that if you need to navigate through and find a particular computer it makes life a lot easier now with workgroups again something that you have to remember is that II ended computer on the network is responsible for its own security and file sharing permissions as we talked about in one of the other classes if you have a domain and a domain controller that single domain controller is responsible for all security than all permissions across the network so you have one computer that you sit down sit down at and you can change the permissions for four different people on the network at that one computer if you have a workgroup every single computer has its own security scheme so if you need to edit security network wide it means you basically have to sit down in each at every single computer and connect the configurations on each and every single computer this is why workgroups are good for small environments because if you have five or ten computers you know every once in a while you can sit down and take half now or or an hour and Ketu certain security configurations if you have a hundred or two hundred or five hundred computers you know man can actually have to sit down at each and every one of those that's why you would want to do main controller so you have a single computer to go to you know when you need to change any sort of security things so this is what a workgroup is on top of this in the Windows work so if you have a Mac computer or a Linux computer or way back when if you're dealing with Windows 95 98 or 2000 workgroups were a lot easier back then all the workgroup was was that logical configuration so you just you just put in the network properties what workgroup you're in and then really all that did was logically put you into a different place on the network now with in the Windows environment so if you have Windows XP if you're dealing with Windows 7 or Windows Vista putting computers into a workgroup not only puts them into a like a logical concept but it also changes things like security file sharing permissions the firewall itself so that's the one thing to remember about the new windows world is when you put a computer into a workgroup it doesn't change logically you know what the what the network looks like it actually changes things like file sharing permissions a network discovery protocol all those types of things so that is that as a Windows specific thing with workgroups so this again was just an overview of the workgroups now let's get into talking about about really why to use workgroups and how to use them in the real world so when most clients or most bosses want their employees to be able to share files the main reason they want them to be able to share files is the share thing is like access to QuickBooks or if you have a construction company to have one a central repository of where you can store invoices or project plants and all that stuff so although with a workgroup environment you can have every single computer on the workgroup being able to share files and folders onto itself usually that's not the best idea because you get this you get something that that technically works but is logically a complete and utter mess you know Sarah saves her documents here Sam saves his documents here Bob saves his documents here and then nobody really knows where were any documents is so when I set up workgroup environments with with with file sharing for my clients I did not allow them or I did not set up for every individual computer on that workgroup to share their files because one you get a logical mess of everybody's just sharing crap all over the place and that's a nightmare it really that is a nightmare and then also as we talked about before every single computer in a work group environment is responsible for its own security permissions so if all of these different computers in that work group are sharing files and folders out then if somebody quits or is fired or is demoted or promoted or any of that it means you have to sit down and eat every one of those single computers and change the security and file sharing all those computers again it's just annoying tedious so what I did is I came up with like a flow server environment so you have the normal workgroup you know everybody joins the workgroup they all go into workgroup one or a mess home or whatever but then I would create a standalone computer on the network to become the file and print server so I have one computer on the work group network this single computer would house all the shared files the shared printers etc so basically this became a poor man sir so as we talked about before if you buy a real server if you buy Windows 2008 server it is going to cost you $2,000 at least beyond that if the thing needs to get repaired the hardware parts are going to be more expensive you're going to have to some but have somebody that had that knows how to administer servers maintain servers fixed servers because that's one thing nobody ever talks about is managing a server isn't that big a deal installing a server isn't that big a deal fixing a server when something has gone horribly wrong you need somebody that really really really really understands servers and especially for small organizations or small companies that can be difficult to find um there's just not that they're not very very many very good server Troubleshooters just out in the open market that you're going to be able to afford and servers again like real servers Windows 2008 server windows 2003 server when something just goes baddie nutty nobody knows why it started happening I mean oh those can be very difficult to repair well in this environment I would just use a Windows 7 Business Edition computer or Windows Vista Business Edition computer or Windows perfects P professional Business Edition computer use that as the server and have all the shared files and Printers on this single computer makes life easier you have the shared files it's inexpensive and again with the security permissions you go back to only having one computer to deal with so you can share out a folder on this computer to this person share a different computer folder out to this person is a different person to this person and then if you need to change that you just go back to the single computer and just just change whatever permissions that you want to do so in the real world this is what I suggest you do if you create a workgroup so you create a workgroup like we talked about we put all the computers in a workgroup long or MS home or whatever you want to call it and then you create one computer on the network and this becomes the server it's still just Windows seven Business Edition or those Vista Business Edition of a Windows XP Pro professional but it's one computer on the network that will now house all the share files and folders printers etc this is a very inexpensive configuration this is very easy to maintain manage etc and again like I said if a client or boss comes to you they're willing to spend five thousand dollars and you tell them you can give them a solution for a thousand dollars they're going to either call you back or promote you or do lots and lots of good things for you so if you can create a solution that works that's not nearly as expensive they think it's gonna be that that's that's good for everybody so again I would suggest with a workgroup environment you create that one computer and just share everything out of that one computer so this is the part of the program where we were about to go into a demonstration and I was going to show you how to create a workgroup in the windows world haha that was the plan you see the problem is is as time has gone by Microsoft keeps changing how to create a workgroup and the different tools you use to create a workgroup so way back in the day with Windows 95 and Windows 98 which I wasn't going to show you you know Windows NT all you had to do is you had to go right click on my computer you just changed what workgroup the computer was and there was a little blank spot and you just said this is the new workgroup or this is in the domain you said ok and you restarted the computer and that put you into a new workgroup and that's all you need to do well then Windows XP came along and they came out with it was called that the network setup wizard because they put in additional security features when you join a workgroup so this is where it would open firewall connections and it would open or turn on file and print sharing so that you could you know share files and all that on the network well the Windows Vista Camel long and they came up with some other mess and then now Windows 7 is out and they've come up with this whole homegroup thing and it's an even bigger mess so I can't show you or it's not worth any of our time for me to sit here and actually try to demonstrate how to get these different types of operating systems to work together realize since you're your students now you're you're supposed to be playing with this stuff so you can combine all these different types of computers into a single workgroup and you can get them to talk to each other but realize it is different for Windows 7 and it is different one for Vista and it's different for XP and you might have to do some google searching if you have multiple different types of computers on the network to get them to talk to each other especially if you have the Mac computer and the Linux it all can be done relatively easily but if I try to sit here and show you every possible configuration demonstrated on my computer that we'd be here all day and you just you just don't want to do that so we are going to go over the basic theory what you have to and that should work in order to make a work a group work so you know what do these network setup wizards though what does homegroup do etc so the first thing before you set up a workgroup the first thing that you have to do is update all the computers that are on the network that are going to become part of this worker so whether they're Windows XP whether they're Windows Vista whether they're Windows 7 even if they're their Mac OSX you need to get all of the updates up-to-date because again you know Microsoft they don't they don't they never sell you a completed product they always put out all these updates that you need and so some of the the security updates are required for Windows XP times computer to talk to a Windows 7 computer you know there are updates that are required for Windows Vista to talk to sound to talk to XP so the first thing you do I mean unless you want to lose your mind because the easiest way to lose your mind is to try to set up a workgroup without updating all the computers so what you should do is the very very very first thing is update all the computers that are going to be part of the workgroup to make sure they have all these little security patches and updates and that they'll actually talk to each other because they're really work like with Vista and XP there are problems with them talking over the network and XP had to get this update just bang so update all the computers that are gonna be part of the workgroup now once you've updated them when you you add all the computers that workgroup basically you'll go in and you need to come up with one name for the worker the default for Windows used to be in this home I don't know what it is anymore but you have to come up with a name for whatever the workgroup is going to be so you might say office let's say though the workgroup is office so when you go to each and every computer to add it to to the workgroup whether using that work setup wizard or whatever you're using you would then say the work group that you want all these computers to be in is office and so that will logically combine them into a work group called office the next thing that needs to be turned on is something called file and printer sharing file and print sharing is an actual service on your Windows computer if this service is not turned on then your workgroup is not going to work you're not going to be able to share files and folders so so you you have to make sure that file and printer sharing is turned on that's what's going to happen the next thing is your firewall you have to make sure the file and print sharing ports on your firewall are open if you go into just the Windows Firewall though this is pretty easy to check and make sure that that they are open this can be a really big problem with Windows systems because again Windows is a little quirky it's a little buggy sometimes things like opening the ports of the firewall just aren't done and these wizards these these configuration wizards I don't know why so if you're having problems sharing files on the network first make sure they're in the right workgroup then make sure file and print sharing is on and then what I would suggest you do is disable but ever firewall you have so if it's Windows Firewall just for a few minutes disable make sure that's not some causing the problems also if you have McAfee firewall or Norton firewall or any of those completely and utterly disable them until you can verify whether or not they are the problem again Norton is just notoriously horrible for blocking stuff it's not supposed to block so a lot of times people will not be able to get to share files and folders simply because Norton Internet Security Suite has blocked their ability if your disable the firewall entirely and you get access to the files and folders that you weren't able to get to before then you know it's a firewall problem and then can go in and play with configurations if you disable the firewall entirely and you still can't get to the files before then you know that there's a bigger issue going on the last thing this was true for Vista and now with Windows 7 is something called in the P or network discovery protocol oh this was a fun one to deal with with Vista before any of us knew what the hell NDP was Network discovery protocol is the actual protocol that is used to show computers that your computers on the network if this is not running on your Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer then no computer on the network will simply be able to see your computer at all because this network discovery protocol it discovers a stuff that's on the network so if that is disabled if that is not turned on for some reason then nobody will be able to see your computer and you also will not be able to see other computers on the network that that's what this thing does that's all of us again this came out with Windows Vista is okay it's continued on the windows 7 so that that could be a problem too again as I said not going to demonstrate how to do this with XP and 7 Vista and all that because that would just take too long but the concept what you need to try to do is you need to come up with a name for your workgroup you need to add all the computers in the workgroup to that name after you've updated all the computers as I said that before but make sure you update every single computer you will be part of the network you don't want to be banging your head against the wall because you didn't take the time to do the updates then file and print sharing has to be turned on if you don't have file and print sharing turned on then nothing is going to work because this is the service that is required for final pressure the firewall you have to make sure your firewall is not blocking a file in print sharing so so this isn't just on the server computer where I said you know you have the one dedicated computer the firewall make the firewall might be your firewall so you know if you have the Secretary's computer trying to get to that dedicated computer it might be the firewall on the secretary Terri's computer that's causing the problems so if you can't get to the ShareFile disable the firewall whether it's Windows Firewall Norton firewall Caffey firewall just disable it entirely if you can then get to the file or folder you know it's a firewall problem and then you just go on and mess with the firewall configurations if you still can't get to the - to the file or folder leave the firewall disabled but realize it's not the firewall that's causing the problems and then go on with your your inaudible troubleshooting steps but then finally with Windows 7 and Windows Vista there was something that came out was called in DP it was network discovery protocol or I guess the ability to turn it off that wasn't there with XP or 2000 or into your any of that and basically the network discovery protocol is the actual protocol that allows your computer to to be seen on the network and to see other computers on the network if you if this is not running or if this is blocked or etc you're just not going to be able to be part of a network that simple so this is the basic concept of what needs to happen to get your Windows workgroup work so that's that's the class on introduction to Windows workgroups um there's not a lot to Windows work groups but workgroups can be very very very very very useful and you know there are they're cost effective solution that or many times all all a company or organization needs we talked about the basic concept of what a workgroup is it is just a group of computers on the local area network it allows you to to logically define computers into different groups you know work Group one or group two or you could say accounting sales marketing if you didn't want to do a full domain this is a way to group computers together on the network again all the security in a work group is in the individual computers so if you need to change a whole set of security policies that means you have to sit down and eat every single computer on that workgroup and change the security policies for those computers again we will talk about will go into a class on domains but if you have a domain and a domain controller you can change the security policies for the entire network at one a single computer in a workgroup you have to change your policies at every single computer in the workgroup we talked about why you might think of using it workgroup again if all your company organization needs to do is share a few files and folders maybe they have some little web application or web database something like that this is very cost effective again you just go to Best Buy you pick up some little crappy machines or Dell computer with a 500 gig hard drive you set it up on the network you set up a workgroup and you're done you're now sharing files you're sharing folders you're sharing printers it's that easy it's that inexpensive if you want backup software you pay $50 for a copy of good piece of backup software for a normal workstation computer because that's all you're buying whereas if you have a full-blown server if you go out buy Windows 2008 server Edition the the backup software for that alone is $600 so if all you're doing is sharing files or have a little website why why buy something that's going to cost you 600 dollars just for backup software for you know just just buy the little workstation computer and you know everybody's going to be happy as we talked about before you know the business lesson with this and the real world is if your boss or your client comes to and they say they're willing to spend five thousand dollars or three thousand dollars or whatever on a file server and you can provide them a solution so this workgroup with this little dedicated computer for for $800 or $1000 and they're going to be happy and they're going to like you and be when they come to you in the future with an absurd proposal where where they're trying to lowball price you will have a much better position to tell them that they need to spend more money you know if you tell they come to you and they say they want to spend $5,000 one time and they only spend $1000 well when they come back to you and they say there's another project for they're willing to spend $5,000 on they will be much more receptive if you say that project is going to cost them $10,000 so that that's that's the give-and-take in their in the real business world again you know the best way to set up one of these work groups I think is to have that dedicated computer so it's like the pho server so it's a server that's not a server I guess but basically just a workstation computer windows 7 Business Edition XP Professional Vista Business Edition just one computer with a nice sized hard drive you share out the files and folders from there again you only have one computer to deal with for security settings you only have one system to mess with you know if something's going wrong in the network it's just nice and neat it keeps it all in one space if you allow everybody on the network to share their files and forums you can just get the illogical mess and remember in the business world in the real computer world logical is as much a problem as a physical you know everybody thinks our problems all about hard drives dying and switching configurations and router configurations a lot of our problem a lot of the work orders we get are about where are my files well I don't know where do you put your files I don't know I mean you know you don't realize how many clients really we know don't just save files willy-nilly all over the place and they don't even remember where they save them so when you have that boss or that secretary you know they need their accounting file now I mean you can get into the whole argument about they should know where they put their own accounting file but it's it's not going to lead anywhere good so basically if you create one dedicated computer with all the files and folders shared on that single dedicated computer he keeps it all in one place and again would you guess make everybody have you as I said I was going to do a demonstration on how to create a worker because I you know create a couple virtual computers and do all all the stuff to create a work group and then I saw what they did with Windows 7 and Vista and I realized it would take about three hours just to show you all the possible configurations and problems so instead of doing that I'm going to trust that you are becoming or you are computer professionals and so you can figure out how to create a work group it's not complicated it's not difficult there's just a whole bunch of little settings and there's a whole bunch of little things that can go wrong so if I had to confront through all of those little things again it will take three hours for you just do a Google search see what they say about it and play with it yourself again since Windows XP is in Windows XP Vista and Windows 7 they have come up with a USB call network setup wizard I don't know what's called now but they did have come up with these configuration wizards to do everything for you so it'll open those firewall ports it will turn on network discovery protocol it will turn on file and print sharing again this to your google search and you'll be able to see you know what you need to do the core of what is happening so what happens in those setup procedures of subset of wizards is first you you you put your computer into the workgroup that you decide to put into so office or home or counting or marketing come up with a single name and that's the the name that you're going to put your computers into so it says what workgroup you say in marketing or sales after that it then turns on something called file and print sharing so file and press train is the actual service on a Windows computer that allows file and print share and have it if that is not turned on you simply can't do file and print sharing this you know that easy the next thing is is the ports on your firewall on your computer we're not talking about the router we're talking about your computer have to be open to allow file pressure most of the time Windows Firewall works pretty well and doesn't block anything sometimes Windows Firewall does if you're dealing with Norton Internet Security Suite or or mcafee internet security sweep or any of those other massive security suite those many times can cause problems to file print sharing because they've blocked the firewall ports to allow file and printer sharing happen so if you run through this wizard and you're still unable to share files then turn off disable firewall entirely again if you can now get to the files and folders you know that the firewall was causing the problem so you can go in and you can tweak configuration within the firewall if you still can't get the files and folders again leave the firewall disabled because it may cause a problem in the future until you figured out what's going on and then start your troubleshooting routine once you can get to the files and folders then turn the firewall back on and see if you can still get to the file support if you can still look at the files and folders you're fine if it now blocks your files and folders that's when you go into any change in configuration to allow you to get to the file support the last part of this whole file sharing network workgroup monstrosity is that what was called in the DEP network discovery protocol this came along with Windows Vista and is known Windows 7 this is the actual networking protocol that allows computers to see each other on the network so if your computer's network discovery protocol is not turned on computers will not be able to see it and it will not be able to see computers so yeah so now we're discovery protocol it isn't on and nothing is just not going to work uh that's you know that's that's really all it is to work groups you know you you share out the files and folders that you want to share out and you go on your day we are going to have a class on file and folder permissions so if you don't understand file and folder permissions that is going to be in one of the classes that's coming up relatively shortly so that is like the final part is whole set input workgroup is you do have to change the permissions to allow people to get into the different files and folders but again that's kind of a class onto itself so this was introduction to Windows workgroups again it's very very useful very cost effective and and if you use it right you can make your clients and your yourself pretty happy especially with small Network again this is intro series to this whole server this whole server track so if you don't feel like you've learned enough it's probably because you haven't just wait around a little bit and we'll get a couple more classes out to hopefully start solidifying all this as you know I'm Eli the computer guy I hope you understand soon what I've told you today and I look forward to seeing you at the next class
