Now you know how to share your files and printers on network you may be surprised how to access them from another PC. There are several methods to do this and here explained how to get access that you want.

Permissions

If you do not have appropriate permissions to access your shared resources then you cannot use them. When setting up your shares ensure that to check permissions so you won't run into this problem. Windows leans to be rather relaxed with default permissions so you must be ok many times.

Browsing for shared resources

The common ways to get and access your shares is to browse for them. There are many approaches to doing this. One of simple ways is to browse your Network Neighborhood or My Network Places based on what edition of Windows you are running.

For this double tick your icon or right tick it and choose Explore. Next you would double tick Complete Network, then Microsoft Windows Network and lastly name of your workgroup. Then you must see a listing of PCs on your network. If it is a work atmosphere you may see a listing of other workgroups or domains.

When you tick on a PC that has shared resources it will show what folders or devices it has shared.

In this there is a folder named "a" and a CD ROM is shared. If any printers shared they would appear here also. From here you could get contents of shared folder with copy and paste files to and from folder assuming you have appropriate permissions.

If there are any shared printers, you can double tick them to install them onto PC. Remember that to print to a shared printer attached to other PC that PC should be on. If it's a separate networked printer then that is not the case.

Other Search Methods

There are other methods to locate your shared resources besides browsing for them. If you know the PC name and share name you can go straight to that share by going to Start, Run and typing in path to the share. E.g. if PC you are attempting to reach is known as Sales and shared folder is known as reports, from Run box you would type \\Sales\reports and tick ok. This would then take you straight to that folder.

If browsing for a PC in network is not working for what reason, which occurs in Windows, you can do a search for PC by using its name or IP address. For this, go to Start, Search and pick For Files and Folders. This menu may be a little different based on your edition of Windows. You will get window like this.

Here you would click on Printers, computers, or people and then tick on a computer on the network. Then you would type in name of PC or its IP address and tick on search.

Now you can install a shared network printer through Start, Settings and then Printers and Faxes or from Control Panel and then printers.