Using Professional Investigator on a laptop/ notebook via a network connection.

If you connect your laptop to your desktop PC using a network, you can set up the laptop to use the copy of Professional Investigator installed on your desktop PC. The advantage of this is that once set up, you don't have to do anything to run PI from the laptop other than connect to the network. The disadvantage is that you can only use it on the laptop when you're connected to the network, and not when you take the laptop away.

If you intend to run Professional Investigator in this way, and want the laptop and desktop PCs to run the program simultaneously, you must ensure that you have sufficient additional user licenses.

How it works...

Installing Professional Investigator on a network isn't difficult. Follow these instructions step-by-step, and you shouldn't go wrong. This example uses Windows 9x/NT, but other versions of Windows will be very similar...

1. Make sure that the drive containing Professional Investigator on your desktop PC (usually C:) is 'shared' on your network with full access.  This is shown by a small blue hand holding the drive when you look in 'My Computer'. You can double-check this by right-clicking on that drive, then choose Sharing... and ensure that 'Shared as...' is selected as well as 'Full Access'.
    
2. To access this shared copy from your notebook, you will need to have a drive letter 'mapped' to the shared drive on the desktop PC. In Windows 9x/NT, you do this by opening Network Neighborhood on the notebook, and clicking the [+] next to the desktop PC, to show its shared drives.  You should see its C: drive listed here as a yellow folder.
    
3. Right-click on this folder, choose Map Network Drive... and choose a letter to use (such as P: for PI!).  Make sure 'Reconnect at Logon' is checked and click OK.  This workstation will now 'see' your desktop PC's C: drive as P:
    
4. Finally, you just need to create a shortcut to the desktop PC's copy of Professional Investigator on the desktop of the notebook. Simply right-click on the notebook's desktop, choose New... Shortcut, and look for the file PI5.exe which in this example will be in the PI5 folder of the P: drive.  Once created, double-clicking this icon will run Professional Investigator across the network, allowing you to access the same program and data on your notebook.

This is a lot easier to do than it is to write down! If you have any queries, please email me at pi-support@pi-software.com