Exactly the same as under Windows 95, this Control Panel is used to configure the Network Settings. It is beyond the scope of this guide to detail the use of TCP/IP settings, but briefly, on the Configuration tab you setup the hardware adapters that are available in the PC as well as the software clients that are used to access the network. All of these can be configured by clicking on one and choosing the Properties. You can also add and remove options with the appropriate buttons.

It is also here that you choose File and Print Sharing which determines which of your devices (hard drive, printer on parallel port, etc) should be made available to others. In here you choose whether you want to share devices and which type you are prepared to share. Then, in My Computer, right click on the device, be it printer or hard drive or folder, and Choose Sharing. You can then set access levels for overall usage, ie whether people should get read-only or read and write access to your shared folders/drives. This is also where you set the name for the device that will appear on other users' machines.

Identification is where you set the name and Workgroup for your PC. If two PCs are set to the same Workgroup they will appear in the root of Network Neighbourhood. You also need to set a name for the PC. Now if someone opens your named PC up on the Network they will see the devices you have shared, named as you named them and with the appropriate access levels and passwords.

The last tab, Access Control, defines whether you want to define a password for each device and whether you want to decide which users or groups should be allowed access to your devices. A list of users and groups will be retrieved automatically from the network.

See also Accelerated boot time