How Do I Send Files Directly to Another Computer on a Network?

Spoom182

Basically, what the title says. I want to send my mom and album, and while I guess I could just email it to her or something, I kinda want to know how to do this just for future reference.

SeñorAmor

Share a folder on one of the computers, put the files in there and access them from the 2nd computer.

Dalboz

Assuming your on Windows, I think you need to have file and print sharing turned on in the network setting. You should be able to see the other computer in your network places (or whatever it's called now, I don't remember). Like SeñorAmor said, you'll need to share the folder. Then it should just be copy and paste job.

Note: I haven't done this for a while, so I'm going by memory, but I remember having to jump through those hoops to get it to work.

Ruckus

Or if you both have MSN messenger you can transfer the files that way.

mspencer

Or if none of these options work -- maybe neither computer is connected to the Internet, or you don't have admin rights, etc -- get a program called NetCat (nc.exe) and put it on both computers, and stream the file (under 2 GB only please!) from one machine to the other via TCP.

Step 1: put nc.exe on each computer.
Step 2: get each computer's IP address on the local network, using something like 'ipconfig'
Step 3: temporarily designate one computer to be the 'server' (which will listen for a connection) and the other computer the 'client' (which will initiate the connection)
Step 4: on the 'server' computer, run this command: nc -l -p 12345 > myfile.dat (where 12345 can be any number between 1024 and 65535, and myfile.dat is the name of the file you want to receive)
Step 5: on the 'client' computer, run this command: nc 1.1.1.1 12345 < myfile.dat (where 1.1.1.1 is the IP address of the server computer, 12345 is the port you picked in step 4, and myfile.dat is the name of the file you want to send.
Step 6: profit! Sit back and wait. Both programs will exit and return to the command prompt once the file has been sent and received, or an error message will be printed if something went wrong.

Note that this method has been described as "ridiculously and perversely old-school" but is guaranteed to work even between different operating systems, as long as your OS has an IP stack and a port of NetCat. This method doesn't need admin permissions on EITHER computer.

Doc

Or you could do the following in windows explorer:

\\her_computer_name\C$

Then type in the admin username/password for her computer. If you have a username and password, it doesn't matter if something is "shared" or not. If you want to access a different drive, replace "C$" with "D$" or whatever.