For Windows 2000, when you connect through network, the local area network
icon on the taskbar updates. Which area of the register updates for this, or
other area that I can view this change?

Now the long question, basically the same question.

I have a laptop that I use for work, I connect it through peer-to-peer to two
or more
other computers at about eight different stations. Basically I hook up the
laptop,
run a virus sweep through Norton Antivirus, then make backups of the various
files
on each of the connected PCs.

So what I want to do is automate this. I occasionally dable in programming
using
Qbasic and Visual Basic, nothing major. I figured I can make a small little
program
that would do all this for me real quick. Here's what I'm thinking of.

First it would look at that Local Area Network to see when I connect to the
system,
remain in the background doing nothing until then. Once that is flagged the
main
program starts. Of course once it's flagged off it goes back into the
background.

Next it will search the Network Neighborhood for all drives that are sharred on
those
PCs. (Unfortunately the nut that installed these PCs had some of them as
partitioned all screwy, so I have to look at all of them, real annoying.)
Ordinarily I
would map all the drives since Norton has to see mapped drives to work. So if
anyone knows Visual Basic 6 that knows how to automatically map drives
through programmin I would appreciate a heads up.

Of course backing up files that's the easy part.

I would appreciate any help you can give on this, thanks.

Of course you can disagree, but first let's mambo.

I don't think this is a task for QBasis o VBasic.
I would use a sort of batch-programming. It is not essantial, but I would
create a equally named share on each computer giving max access.

This little programm consists of two batch-programms

the first programm,

net use Z: \\backup-server\backup-share
rem connect to the backup server (or is this a drive/path on your laptop?)
rem then correct the drive assignment in the main-routine

call main.cmd XXXX YYYYY
rem XXXX is the computername and YYYYY is the share name on the PC
rem repeat this for every computer

the main-batch

net use W: \\%1\%2
if errorlevel 0 goto :ende
rem if you can't connect to a specific computer then finish this part

start /wait do-the-virus-scanning on drive W:
rem for nt4/w2k/xp start the virus scanning and wait for completion

xcopy W:\*.* Z:\backup-path\*.* /s/e/y
rem copy the files from w: to Z: with subdirectories

:ende
exit

--
HTH

Karpi
<fluctuat nec mergitur>