It used to be quite easy years ago by using the Windows Homegroup process via a home network setup (wireless or LAN connecting the 2 computers), but Microsoft removed Homegroup from Windows 10 a couple of years ago,

@Dexcon - Really!? Sheesh ..... I’ve been kinda hoping just to grab one of my YELLOW CABLES and, click and play. So, no LAN type options?

I’ve had the Builders insert a front facing HHD and SSD ICY BOX IB-172SK-B. I was hoping for a KMV switching solution

All the best, Grazie, with your new computer - exciting times! Like many others, I'm really looking forward to your experiences of it.

@Dexcon - you’ll be the first to know 😎 . I’m hoping my investment will be seen as sound. I was due an upgrade, the PC as well.

You can still network your computers.

Connect both computers via a router or crossover cable.

On windows 10, click the folder icon in the task bar.

Right click on "this PC" in the left pane, and select properties.

Make note of what workgroup it says the computer is in. Workgroup is the default.

In windows 7, right click on my computer and do the same, select properties from that menu and follow the above steps. Edit the workgroup there if needed to match the one listed for Windows 10.

Once the workgroups on both PCs is the same, you should be able to right click on any hard drive, go to "sharing", and enable file sharing. If you have a specific folder you keep your video files in, you can share just that folder instead of the entire drive. When sharing, make sure you enable read and write permissions, you want to be able to also make changes to the files, not just view them.

If all is configured properly, you should be able to see your other PC when you click on "network" in that left pane after clicking the folder icon in windows 10, or when clicking my computer in Windows 7. You may be asked for login info, enter yours in if so, and then you should see any folders or drives you shared.

@fr0sty - And you do this too? What issues have come across? I’ve got a YELLOW cable, I’m assuming it’s one of those Crossover Cables, but how would I know? Also, is this purely for file sharing? I can’t operate one machine from another, say on VP? I’m wanting to know if I can do some work on PC1, from operating on PC2 and have the PC1 output sent to PC2?

Thanks @fr0sty.

@fr0sty … that works brilliantly - thank you so much. Laptop wi-fi to router; desktop LAN to router - it works fine both ways.

Oddly, it seems fairly much the same process as the old Homegroup which was apparently removed with W10 build 1803 in April last year, not a couple of years ago as I first thought - I guess it just seems like a couple of years ago.

Thanks again. Much appreciated - I'm very happy to have this function in action again.

@Grazie

Maybe step back and consider is this the best way forward. Sounds to me like an unnecessary layer of complexity. Surely you’re first step should be to port all of your existing projects, files and any software thats needed (bite the bullet and purchase more software licences if required) from old to new pc via an external 2.5” portable hd. Then use the new PC nearly exclusively.

In my case, laptop and desktop, if I do some work on say my laptop and then wish to use the PC to finish it, because its more powerful than the laptop, then I use an ssd thumbdrive to copy a project from the laptop to the PC.

I use this following method if I have done a lot of changes on my laptop, not just one project. I use the MS robocopy mirror command to do this. I use a custom made batch file that interrogates/copies/mirrors (using “mir”) only a selected, identical list of folders contents and subfolders on the data drive on both machines and so makes both data drives (selected folders) identical. Laptop —>> HD —>> PC. The external portable hd of course in this scenario does double duty as backup, I use 2 of them and rotate occasionally.

Best of luck with the Monsta Grazie.

@Grazie

Maybe step back and consider is this the best way forward. Sounds to me like an unnecessary layer of complexity.

@Former user - Yes, indeed wise advice. I don’t like complexity.

On the last Pc upgrade that I did I used a third party app called EaseUs PCTrans to transfer most of my files across to the new PC. But I did also use a KVM to operate both PCs during the swap over and also followed Dexcon's method of using an external Hard Drive USB caddy for moving over large media folders.

@Grazie

Also, is this purely for file sharing? I can’t operate one machine from another, say on VP? I’m wanting to know if I can do some work on PC1, from operating on PC2 and have the PC1 output sent to PC2?

Following fr0sty's suggestion, I loaded a VP16 project on my laptop (PC2) where the veg file and all the media files are on the desktop (PC1) - it worked. Not only could I load it but I could save it back to the desktop, the choice of where to save it being by the 'save as' option in VP. BUT - and there is always a 'but' - no 3rd party FX are available on PC2 unless those FX are also installed on PC2 (an error dialogue box will make this clear on opening a veg on PC2) - meaning having to have 2 purchases of all or most 3rd party plugins in order to make this work successfully.

is this purely for file sharing?

... yes, in respect of 'sharing' doesn't provide, AFAIK, access to the OS or Program Files.

Following on from JN_'s reply ...

Then use the new PC nearly exclusively.

... your new PC is almost certainly going to be blisteringly faster than the much older PC1. I reckon that within a day or two of trying to integrate PC1 into PC2's operation, exasperation at the slowness of PC1 compared to your new PC2 will accelerate the decision to abandon PC1 for serious editing far more apparent.

I’ve got a YELLOW cable, I’m assuming it’s one of those Crossover Cables

If you connect both computers through your router/modem via conventional LAN and/or wi-fi, all should work fine. I just fired up an 8 yrs old XPS connected via LAN to the router/modem, and it read the main LAN connected desktop without a problem (though my arm is a bit sore from having to use the crank-handle to boot up the old XPS).

BTW, if your "front facing HHD and SSD ICY BOX IB-172SK-B" is empty so as to be used for an additional HDD, then you could use this instead of needing to get a docking station; effectively, it is a docking station..

I have 3 different computers connected with a KVM switcher (2 monitors keyboard and mouse) and a large capacity external USB HDD that I have plugged in to the USB port on one of my monitors, so when I switch over to any computer the external USB HDD shows up on every computer via the shared monitor. Works a treat if you want to back up or transfer files to each computer and/or add working files too so each computer can do their bit. For speed best to use a USB 3 or higher external HDD and of course a monitor with a USB 3 port but USB 2 will still work. Oh forgot to mention one little downside is if you are doing a transfer from an internal HDD to the external HDD wait untill all the files have finished being copied before switching over to another computer ...

You people are the very Best! Really you are, with your reassurances of best practice and workflow for VPand other software I shall apply my K.I.S.S. management approach.

@fr0sty - And you do this too? What issues have come across? I’ve got a YELLOW cable, I’m assuming it’s one of those Crossover Cables, but how would I know? Also, is this purely for file sharing? I can’t operate one machine from another, say on VP? I’m wanting to know if I can do some work on PC1, from operating on PC2 and have the PC1 output sent to PC2?

Thanks @fr0sty.

Some network cards do not require a crossover cable (which is basically an ethernet cable with the wires reversed on one side) to directly hook up to another PC, but some do. Best route (no pun intended) is to buy a gigabit router and connect both of those computers to it, that takes the guesswork out of it and will give you wifi as well (you may already have a router built into your internet gateway, so check. Many do. If you have wifi in your home, you have a router).

That said, a gigabit router is important if you plan on editing remotely from another machine. Some older routers are limited to 100 megabits per second, 1/10 of gigabit speed, so be sure you are using a gigabit capable router, as 100mbps isn't enough to use for editing. It is indeed possible to open a project stored on one machine from another one, it might ask you to specify the location of the media as the file address is going to appear different to the computer being that the files are on another computer, but other than that, I have indeed edited a project in Vegas that was on another PC. Performance can't be expected to be 100%, all data is limited to a 1gbps pipe (whereas your SATA hard drives are 6gbps), but for simpler projects, you shouldn't have any issues at all.

Following fr0sty's suggestion, I loaded a VP16 project on my laptop (PC2) where the veg file and all the media files are on the desktop (PC1) - it worked. Not only could I load it but I could save it back to the desktop, the choice of where to save it being by the 'save as' option in VP. BUT - and there is always a 'but' - no 3rd party FX are available on PC2 unless those FX are also installed on PC2 (an error dialogue box will make this clear on opening a veg on PC2) - meaning having to have 2 purchases of all or most 3rd party plugins in order to make this work successfully.

Try this... instead of opening Vegas natively on the second computer, go through into the first computer's c:/ (or the letter of your main system drive) program files folder (you may have to enable sharing on it), look for the Vegas folder, and open Vegas.exe (it may say vegas(insert version number here).exe) from within that folder on the remote computer. This has you opening the vegas install from that networked computer, which in turn should open all plugins that are installed with it. Not sure if there are any issues that would prevent this, but theoretically it should work.

@fr0sty … following your suggestion - from my laptop, I was able to successfully open the desktop's VP16 using the exe file on the VEGAS folder under C:\Program Files ...

… then there was that pesky BUT - after selecting a veg project also on the desktop, VP16 soon presented the missing media dialogue box and asked for a new location for that media event. That was easy enough to do, but then it wanted to do that for each and every media event in the project - it didn't offer the bulk import option along the lines of 'do you want to import all the other missing media that's in this folder?' as usually appears next - it was a missing media search for each and every event Not wanting to do this around 1,000 times, I abandoned the experiment.

It was good to have given this a try, but I don't think that its going to give Grazie the ease of interoperability between 2 PCs that he's looking for. And then there's still the question of which PC to have all the 3rd party plugins loaded on, and I suspect that will be the new PC, which means that the old PC will be left with fairly much only VP's native FX and plugins fully operable, the 3rd party plugins most probably having to have been de-activated (and then possibly in trial mode) in order for those plugins to be activated on the new PC.

For me, I'm very happy to just have file sharing between my computers.

Maybe something for future consideration.

I use external USB drives whenever possible and that way my projects are never really tied to a particular PC. When you 1st connect your drive to your PC, Windows will assign it a drive letter but then if you go into the Computer management settings, you can manually assign the drive letter so that particular drive always gets the same drive letter assignment every time you plug it into your PC. You get a new PC, then just plug that drive into your new PC and assign the same drive letter assignment.

I use an SSD drive as a current project working drive as well as store often used media and projects on that same drive, then back all projects and media up to a larger USB HDD for archival purposes.

I also use a program called Freefilesync.

https://freefilesync.org/

It's a free folder syncing utility. You can easily use it to back up projects and all its media to a separate drive. You can even do this type of syncing through network connections so you can backup and restore to network connected drives or sync drives on separate PCs. So in Grazie's original situation, I likely would have just used freefilesync to transfer the projects and all the media to the new PC, but then I would have made sure the drive letters on both PC's were the same using the Computer Management drive letter assignments.

I wrote about this in another topic but I use a NAS to store all my footage and files and "live edit" over the network. So my PC runs Vegas Pro but all files are on a network share. This works perfectly and that way you can edit from any PC you want to, just map that network drive to the same letter on all PC's using it and it should work automatically and seamlessly.

With that said, I do have a pretty beefy NAS with lots of drives, SSD caching and 10Gbit network. But even with 1Gbit networking I had no issues whatsoever, I edit with proxies anyway and those are very small in size so the network is never the limit.

No tools, syncing or anything like that needed. If you don't want to build a Dedicated NAS for this it can also be achieved by turning on Windows file sharing on one PC and connecting to that from others. If you want it to be seamless it's best to try and use the same drive letter if possible.

p.s. Since 1 Gigabit networking a feature called "auto-mdix" was added which basically means that if at least one side has a gigabit network card crossover cables aren't needed anymore

p.s. If you want to use Vegas on multiple computers, you need to install Vegas Pro on those computers locally, you only share the project folders!

@Grazie It's easy enough to hook up a kvm switch and go back and forth between machines on one monitor... if the video outputs and inputs are all the same... hdmi being the most common these days with kvms. I'm using an inexpensive TESmart 4k60p 4-port kvm with a BenQ monitor and it's terrific. (My monitor has a built-in 2-port kvm but that totally sucks which is why I got the external kvm.)

Sharing file systems is a bit more complicated these days with Windows. Don't recommend shared file systems over wi-fi... although you might not need any extra hardware, the very poor performance isn't worth the effort of getting it to work. For folks not up to ethernet switching, manually configuring nics and etc files, and fighting with Windows networking, consider plugable media. I throw a Kingwin SATA drive tray (similar to Icy Box) into a 3.5 in drive bay that allows hot swapping inexpensive 2.5 in sata hard disks or ssds (cheap 512gb ssd's can be had for around $45-$50 while cheap laptop hard drives are about $10 less). Only complications are installing the drive bay, plugging the SATA cable into the motherboard, and configuring the bios to enable hot-swapping that SATA port. Kingwin also makes a dual-drive bay that securely locks the drives into place as seen in some raid racks... I devote the bottom slot to a semi-permanent, more expensive but higher performing Samsung unit as a 2nd work drive and the top slot for cheapo ssds which function as file exchange between machines as well as archival storage for completed projects. Another possibility is a usb/sata dock. There's also a USB 3.1 to SATA III Adapter cable made by SEDNA that works great for me, particularly copying deliverables right off a project sata ssd that is recognized by macs without any fuss.

@Grazie It's easy enough to hook up a kvm switch and go back and forth between machines on one monitor... if the video outputs and inputs are all the same... hdmi being the most common these days with kvms.

@Howard-Vigorita - Yes, I've used and have a BELKIN, only problem that it doesn't have an HDMI in its Head! Pity . . .

I have an older KVM so I use the HDMI and DVI inputs on my monitors and switch them for computer A or B and use the KVM for keyboard and mouse.

I have an older KVM so I use the HDMI and DVI inputs on my monitors a

Er yes, but I don’t understand?

switch them for computer A or B and use the KVM for keyboard and mouse.

Th last bit I get, but the switching, A and B, I don’t understand.

My monitors have DVI and HDMI inputs so I connect each computer to each monitor using the HDMI/DVI outputs of my video cards. Then just switch the inputs on the monitors for computer A or B.

@Grazie It's easy enough to hook up a kvm switch and go back and forth between machines on one monitor... if the video outputs and inputs are all the same... hdmi being the most common these days with kvms.

@Howard-Vigorita - Yes, I've used and have a BELKIN, only problem that it doesn't have an HDMI in its Head! Pity . . .

Does it have DVI? HDMI and DVI are cross compatible, you can buy a HDMI to DVI cable.

The KVM switch you plan to use must be able to pass the 2k and 4k resolutions and it will be expensive.

JJK