• In the General Tab click “Internet Protocol TCP/IP” and click Properties button below. 
• Click the Radio button “Use the Following IP address” and provide the unique IP address, subnet mask, gateway and DNS addresses in their respective fields.

Sample IP Address:  120.20.20.1, 120.20.20.2, 120.20.20.3
Sample Subnet Mask: 255.0.0.0

Remember to provide the unique IP address (of the same class) to each computer and same subnet mask.

• After providing the IP address the next step is to provide the unique computer name, workgroup or domain name.

Naming Workgroups and Domains

For network computers, it is required that they either the part of the workgroup or domain.  Naming workgroup and Domain is defined in the following steps.

• In Windows XP, right click “My Computer”
• Click Properties > Click Computer Name and click Change.
• Provide your Workgroup name If your computer is a part of a workgroup and provide domain name if your computer is a part of a domain.

Release/Renew IP Address

If your computer is getting the IP address from the DHCP server and you want to release the current IP address to get a new IP address then you can do it with very simple below steps.

• Start > Run > CMD
• On the command prompt type “ipconfig/release” without quotes.  It will release your current IP address.
• Type “ipconfig/renew” it will assign you a new IP address from the pool of the DHCP server.

Setting up Printer

In the following steps you will learn that how to connect to the network printer.

Start > Run > \\computername\sharenameoftheprinter press enter

 e.g. \\server1\officejet

By this command you will be connected to your network printer.

Enable/Disable Windows Firewall
Firewall must be enabled and configured to block the unauthorized access to your computer. It is used to protect your privacy on internet and protect your PC from internal and external threats.  By default Windows XP provides the firewall features.  The below section tells that how to enable/disable the firewall in Windows XP.

• Start > Control Panel > Double Click Windows firewall icon
• In the General tab you can turn on or turn off the firewall.
• In the Exception Tab you can block/unblock the ports and applications.
• In the Advanced tab you can configure the network settings, security logs and ICMP settings.

Creating Network Users

There are two basic types of the Windows operating systems i.e. 1. Network operating systems 2.  Non networking operating systems.  In the networking operating systems the users are creating and managed through the Active Directory Users and Computers option.  In the Windows XP users are created through the following steps.

• Start > Control Panel > Double click user accounts > create a new account.

Fixing Network Cables Errors

Accurate network cabling is required for the connecting between the computers.  Network cables should be tested with the cable tester device.  There are two types of cables Straight cable and Cross over cable.   If your network cable is not working properly, you will notice a message on your Windows desktop’s status bar “network cable is unplugged”.  The possible solutions of fixing this error is to check both ends of the cable and see if they are properly plugged, try to replace the cable if it is damaged, update the driver of the NIC card and last option is to replace the NIC adapter. 
The above solutions will definitely help to fix the problems with the network cables.

Installing Internet Information Server

Microsoft’s Internet Information Server is a Windows component that is used to publish the information on the internet.  IIS includes a large number of administrative features for the websites and the web server. It can be installed with the help of the following steps.

• Start > Control Panel > Click Add/Remove Programs
• In the Widows components wizard check the “Internet Information Services” and click next. (Insert CD of your operating system if required).
• Wait for the components to be installed completely and click finish.
• Go to the Administrative Tools in the control panel to see if the IIS is installed successfully.

Note:  It is recommend that you format your partition with the NTFS file system and also install the DNS before installing the IIS.