Somebody please help me connect my windows 8 laptop to my imac!!??

[Lady_X]

google is sooo not being helpful. :/

 

[Halla74]

google is sooo not being helpful. :/

What do you mean by "connect"?

Are you trying to establish a peer-to-peer network between the two?
Or, are you simply trying to get the Windows 8 laptop on the same network as the iMac?
If you wish to share files between them you can use an external hard drive, but make sure the hard drive is formatted as FAT32 - unless your iMac has the plugin to read NTFS formatted drives.

What exactly do you wish these two machines to be able to do together?



-Halla74

 

[Lady_X]

oh right. sorry. just trying to connect them to a shared network or homegroup as my laptop is calling it. i can see the other laptops in the house but i've been fooling with this all morning and my brain hurts. i just need to share files without emailing everything to myself...also...no photoshop on the laptop and i need it.

 

[Halla74]

just trying to connect them to a shared network or homegroup as my laptop is calling it.

OK, got it.
Your home's NETWORK is different than a Windows HOMEGROUP on your home network.
So, at minimum if you wanted to connect a Windows laptop to:

(1) Your home's network, and
(2) the Windows Homegroup on your home network - you will need the following, in the following order:

(a) You need to know your home network name (e.g. "LX7W6" - or "LXHOME" - whatever it's called)
(b) You need to know the SSID or network access code/security key to your home network (you can cheat and get this by right clicking on your home network properties of another Windows laptop in your house, and then clicking the checkbox to "show characters" because the key will be a bunch of bullets (*********) ion an effort to mask it)

Now - if you connect to the home network - your new laptop will be able to access the Internet, and any shared devices (printers, hard drives, etc.) on your home network.

(c) If you wish to connect to the Windows homegroup, you will need the homegroup's access code/security key - whatever the hell its called, which should also be obtainable from an existing Windows laptop as noted above...
-
in all honesty, it seems like you should be able to share files between the tow laptops with a flash drive/USB drive without having the machines on the same homegroup - that is if both laptops have application software (e.g. Photoshop) that can read the same file types.

You could even e-mail the files to yourself and then download them to the other laptop if you wanted too... (just thinking out loud)

I'm no expert, but the homegroup is basically a means of connecting to the shared components of other Windows laptops (user profiles, shared documents/folders, shared printers, etc.)

i can see the other laptops in the house but i've been fooling with this all morning and my brain hurts.

i just need to share files without emailing everything to myself...also...no photoshop on the laptop and i need it

Right. So, you need to use Photoshop on the machine that it is installed on.
You cannot - at least to my knowledge - run Photoshop on an iMac from a Windows laptop as if Photoshop were on the Windows laptop - if that makes any sense whatsoever.

Let me know how it goes, I'll be around for a bit!

 

[Halla74]

Hey there,

Here's a JPEG with tips from a Windows 7 desktop - the process should be very similar...

View attachment 10954

 

[Lady_X]

okay awesome! i looove you! thanks! haven't tried this yet but i'm about to! thanks!!