Networked pc's - transfering software

[pren]

Mornin' all.

Another IT question for you, I'm afraid.

My good lady has a netbook with no disc drive. Her trial version of MS Office 2007 has expired and a new key is £99. The cheapest price i can find for an official MS download is about the same.

She's tried Open Office and it doesn't seem to work with her school computers no matter how the files are saved :?

I can get an on-disc copy of MSO Home and Student 07 from Amazon for around £60 with a 3 machine license.

Is it possible to install the Office 07 on the main PC in our house and somehow tansfer it to her netbook via a network cable and authenticate it with the license? It would need to be on her machine when she's out and about.

I've never set up a network before so I'm not sure what's involved.

Thanks in advance!

 

[cambournepete]

If she can see your CDROM drive from her netbook then you should be able to install it over the network, using the same license key.

 

[GrahamH]

As the previous post suggests, share the CD rom drive on the other machine, and install it from there using the CD key that comes with the pack.

Make sure you uninstall fully the trial version before hand. I had a trail version and had some fun and games when I installed the one that came in the pack. You may have to pick through the registry and remove some of the old entries. And finally, rather than double clicking the set-up file, right click on it and choose run as administrator, some problems I had were fixed by doing this.

You may even get away with just entering the key from the one you've bought/buying from amazon though the home student version is slightly different.

To share you cd-rom, just right click on it and select share from the drop down list. On my windows machine (Vista), from the pop-up window I had to select advance sharing and then share this folder.

From the netbook you should be able to type in at the run prompt or an IE address bar \\machine_name\cd-rom drive letter (\\spike\f).

Hope this helps

 

[Boatfixer]

Funnily enough we have had to do this for the same reasons. I installed the Office 2007 from Amazon this weekend - in the box with the CD are instructions on loading the software onto machines with no CD drive. Basically you can download it from the net with the code number inside the packaging.

Hope this helps

Graham

 

[pren]

Thanks for all that, guys!

Seems fairly straight forward. Just picked up a network cable so I'll have a fiddle later.

 

[pren]

Aaaaaah!

Not so simples!

Connected the netbook to my pc via LAN. The both say their connected and that their sending and recieving stuff, tho by hugely differing amounts (important?).

Set the cd drive to be shared. Not finding it on the netbook. Tried dropping a random pic into the shared documents folder - same thing.

Been at this for 2hrs now. Either the netbook is going out the window or I am! :evil:

 

[TrimTheKing]

Aaaaaah!

Not so simples!

Connected the netbook to my pc via LAN. The both say their connected and that their sending and recieving stuff, tho by hugely differing amounts (important?).

Set the cd drive to be shared. Not finding it on the netbook. Tried dropping a random pic into the shared documents folder - same thing.

Been at this for 2hrs now. Either the netbook is going out the window or I am! :evil:

One word for you, Permissions!

Right click on the CD drive, then Sharing & Security, then Permissions. You need to make sure Everyone is allowed ful access, that should sort it.

 

[pren]

hey.

Turns out to have been something wrong with the ip addresses. I put in some that were suggested elsewhere and it worked. The automatic settings couldn't find any so I had to manually enter them.

I can now share files with the netbook as well as install software from the host cd drive.

Still need to figure out how to share an internet connection, but that can wait.

 

[Majorlarf]

For anyone looking for cheap Office 2007
They had it on offer last month for £35