Teach you how to create and set up a homegroup

After you understand some of the considerations for creating and setting up your homegroup, let's look at how to create a family group.

(1) Please ensure that the LAN has been established, and all computers are properly connected to the LAN, the entire local area network is working properly.

(2) Use the left mouse button to click on the screen in the lower right corner of the network icon, and choose "Open Network and Sharing Center" from the pop-up menu, then you will see the Network and Shared Center window.

(3) Under the "View network activity" option in the Network and Sharing Center, you can see an option named "HomeGroup", which, if shown as "prepare to create" as shown in Figure 1, indicates that no homegroup exists on the current network and you can start creating it. However, if this is shown as "join," the homegroup already exists on the current LAN, you can only choose to join the homegroup, and you cannot create a new one, which means that the computer already belongs to a homegroup if it appears as "joined."

Figure 1 Determine if a homegroup is available to join, or create a new family group

(4) Click "Create HomeGroup" in the interface that appears later to begin the creation process.

(5) First you can see the interface shown in Figure 2, where you need to decide what to share to the homegroup. Note here that the win7 system download allows only the built-in libraries to be shared to the homegroup. If you want to share more custom libraries and folders that are not joined to a homegroup, you need to share the actual folders to the homegroup.

Figure 2 Selecting a library content to share to a homegroup

(6) After selecting a good library to share, click the Next button, Windows will start to set up and adjust the system, this process may take a certain amount of time. When you have finished setting up, you can see the interface shown in Figure 3, which means that the homegroup has been created. The password shown here must be kept in mind because other computers can only join the homegroup after entering the password, but the user can also modify the password.

Figure 3 Once created, the system automatically assigns the default strong password to the homegroup

(7) After you write down your password, click the Finish button to exit the wizard.

You may also need to set some options for your homegroup later. Open the network and Sharing Center again, at which point the status of HomeGroup will be displayed as added, click the added word, and then see the interface shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Here you can change the 罝 option for your homegroup

Under the shared Libraries and printers option, you can share other libraries with your homegroup or stop sharing some libraries.

Under the other homegroup actions option, there are some more important items that need special attention.

1 View or print home group password: This option lists the current password for the homegroup and can print it out. It is recommended that you do not arbitrarily modify the default password, because this default password is very safe, not only relatively long, but also contains a variety of characters, belong to a safe password. Although such a password is more difficult to remember, but only when the computer to join the HomeGroup to provide the password, usually can be ignored 4

2 Change Password: If you do have a reason to want to use a different password, you can make changes through the link. Note, however, that if more than one computer in the HomeGroup is already joined, you can change the password on any one of the joined computers, but after the change succeeds, you will also need to enter this new password on each other computer that joins the group (accessing the HomeGroup resources on another computer and seeing a dialog box that asks for a new password) In addition, when you change your homegroup password, be aware that the password here differs from the password elsewhere, and is not displayed as an asterisk, but rather as a character that actually makes up the password, primarily for easy logging and use on other computers. So make sure your surroundings are secure when you change your password in the Win7 flagship edition.

3 Leave the homegroup: If you want to quit the homegroup, you can use the link. After you click the link, you can see the interface shown in Figure 5, which provides 3 different options.

Leave homegroup: This option allows the computer to completely exit from the homegroup.

Do not leave without changing anything: This option applies when you click to exit this option and do not make any changes to the homegroup.

Don't leave, but change what I'm sharing: if you don't want to quit the homegroup, you just want to change what you want to share, or you can click the option to adjust it.

4 Change advanced sharing settings: When you click the link, there are a number of options, and all the options are divided into "family or work" and "public", which is exactly the two different types of network in Windows that are suitable for different network environments. The options here allow you to adjust the sharing and homegroup options in different types of environments. Each of these options has a detailed text description, but typically you do not need to adjust these options to work well with the default settings. Also note here that only the home network can create and join homegroup, so if you cannot create or join, check the network type that the current network is setting.

Figure 5 different options for exiting the homegroup

Note here that depending on the environment and speed of your network, and the number of computers that you are joining a homegroup, some changes to the homegroup may take a long time to apply to all computers in the group. During the period of application configuration, the HomeGroup configuration interface will see a hint similar to Figure 6, at which point all other configurations cannot be changed. You can modify the configuration again after changing all computers that are applied to the homegroup.

Figure 6 All settings cannot be changed in the process of applying 罝 changes