Is there a messanger I can use to communicate with the one othe rcomputer on my network? Is there a built in one in winxp? Whats the best one? Prefferable one that uses very little resources.

Try using netsend. This is a default service on most XP machines which is god darn annoying and will at times frighten your friends who don't know about it because it pops right up. Go to the DOS console by typing... Run -> cmd.

 

Then type in: net send

and follow the instructions, generally you can try it on your own computer. If your computer is called: mycomputer, then type: net send mycomputer hello1234 message

 

Here's a site on it. Note that some people have developed GUI interfaces to accomodate this net send feature to make sending and receiver much more user friendly.

 

http://www.lantalk.net/net-send-command/

You'll need to have the Messenger service running on both computers for this to work - spyware programs and the like often disable this.

XP SP2 also disables the Messenger service, you can renable it by selecting run in the start menu > services.msc > finding the Messenger service (just called "Messenger") and starting it, you can also right click > properties and select it to automatically start up with the computer.

I suppose it would be kindof immoral for me to not to point out that this might expose you to popups being sent to you over the net. It certainly happened to me a few times in Win 2k before I turned Messenger off, but if you're behind a firewall you shouldn't have a problem.

I cant get the message too send from command prompt. i PUT IN THE IP, THen it tells me it cant be found

Another computer on my LAN has an internal IP of 10.0.0.8 so I type:

 

net send 10.0.0.8 this is a test

 

to send a message saying "this is a test" to the computer named 10.0.0.8.... you can try replacing the IP with a * so:

 

net send * testing

 

that will send it to your whole network, including yourself.

I think you also have to be on the same workgroup for that to work, so it's worth checking that too.