Lazlo requires you to connect using your login name and password. Windows 95 and 98 (rather annoyingly) only allow that login name and password pair to be entered once when you first start your Windows session. In a lab environment (and on some personal machines), you will frequently sit down to a computer that is already running and might never have asked you for a name and password.

Here's the rule of thumb to live by when first sitting down to a Windows (PC) machine in a lab: Using your mouse, go to the Start menu and select Log Off. The picture shows Sbguest (a likely name in the labs), but other names may appear on the machine you are using.

You will be asked to confirm the desire to log off off the system. Answer "Yes".

After a moment, the desktop should clear and you will be presented with a login prompt like the one shown above. It will most likely have a name already entered which you should erase.

In our example, we are logging in with a fictitious account named "daisy" (three guesses where this name came from).

Enter your login name and password in the proper blanks as illustrated in this picture. Press OK when you are done.

If you have never used this computer to log in, you might be asked by a subsequent prompt to type your password a second time for verification. Just follow the prompts until you return to the desktop.

Now that you are back to the desktop, Windows is ready to speak to Lazlo using your login name and password.

Look around on the desktop and locate the icon labeled Network Neighborhood. It will most likely look like the highlighted icon pictured above. The Network Neighborhood is used to browse the lists of Windows computers connected to the Sweet Briar Network.

The computers will be separated into categories called "Workgroups", each with a name representative of its location or purpose. The next step of this tutorial will show you how to navigate this Network Neighborhood to locate Lazlo. There are a number of different ways to do this, but we'll start with the most basic for the sake of illustration and reinforcing the concept of navigating a network.

Double click on the Network Neighborhood icon that you located on the desktop. A window should open that will resemble the one pictured above. Windows 98 and 95 will be cosmetically different, but you should see at least the icon labeled "Entire Network" as highlighted here.

When the neighborhood first opens you are viewing only the list of computers in the same group as the computer you are using. Lazlo is located outside of the group, so you need to double click on Entire Network to see the entire list of available workgroups.

After double-clicking on "Entire Network", a list should appear of all the current workgroups. The list may vary depending on what systems are currently operating. They are listed in alphabetical order, so peruse the list until you locate "Unix Servers" and double-click.

Don't worry if the icons are smaller or laid out differently on your screen, as long as you see a list that contains the "Unix Servers" workgroup you are headed in the right direction.

Unix, by the way, is another type of operating system (just like Windows 95/98/NT and MacOS are types of operating systems) that is mainly used for servers - like Lazlo.

NOTE: Sometimes, a Windows machine will not see the entire network for several minutes after having been turned on. If you receive an error message or don't see the "Unix Severs" group, wait a few minutes and try again. Yes, it's annoying... but as experienced users are already aware, annoyances are a standard feature of Windows.

After a moment, a list should appear of systems in the "Unix Servers" group. The other members of the list may fluctuate, but for this tutorial all we're interested in finding is Lazlo.

Double-click on the "Lazlo" icon.

Double-clicking on your personal folder will yield a list of your files. If this is the first time you've used Lazlo, you'll see only the website folder as pictured above. If you have used Lazlo before you'll see additional files and folders that you may have created.

Take special note of the "Address" shown in the window above:

\\LAZLO\daisy

This is a direct path to your folder that will eliminate almost all of the navigating discussed above. We'll discuss this method in the next few steps.

At this point, dragging and dropping icons to and from this window, double-clicking on documents, etc., will work just fine and is a perfectly acceptable way to work with your files. The drive-mapping process discussed next is a quicker and more practical way to achieve this, however.

Let's back up a bit and approach this a different way.

Rather than navigate through all of those layers of the Network Neighborhood, we'll go straight to your folder and associate your folder with a drive letter on the computer. This will make your folder act like the hard drive already in the computer (called the C: drive) and simplify getting to your files from programs like Word.

Close all of the windows that you may have opened in the steps above so we can have a clean desktop.

Now, using your mouse, find the Network Neighborhood icon and click once on it with the RIGHT mousebutton.

A menu will appear. Look for "Map Network Drive" (as illustrated above) and click it once with the left button (or let go of the button if you're still holding it down).

You should now be seeing a "Map Network Drive" prompt.

This prompt consists of the drive letter that you will associate with Lazlo (take whatever the system recommends... it might not be F: as seen above) and a path to your server.

If anything is already in the path field, clear it out and type:

\\lazlo\yourloginname

Where yourloginname if the name of your Lazlo account. Since we are using daisy in this tutorial, the path will look like the one in the path above.

The slashes are backslashes, usually found on your keyboard below the backspace key and above the return/enter key.

Make sure "Reconnect at login" is NOT checked as shown above.

Click OK when you are certain that everything is entered properly.

If everything was correct from the previous step, a window containing your files should pop up similar to the one shown above.

The drive letter (F: in this case) may be different on your system. This is perfectly OK. Just take note of what was mapped on your system so you can find it easily from programs such as Word.

You have now associated your Lazlo directory with this drive letter. While you are working with Lazlo, all of your files can be saved from various programs to this lettered "drive" rather than navigating through the neighborhood and dragging icons.

In the following steps we will briefly discuss making new folders and the extremely important process of disconnecting from Lazlo before leaving the computer.

Creating folders is a good way to keep your files organized. Folders can be used to categorize the things that you save and make files easier to locate a later date.

To create a new folder in your shared area, use your mouse to pull down the File menu in your Lazlo window, select New and then Folder (as illustrated above).

You should see a folder in your area called "New Folder". It may not be higlighted, so click once on the words "New Folder" so it appears as it does in the picture to the above.

You can now rename the folder by typing in a new name. This is illustrated in the next step.

In this example, we've renamed our folder "Papers".When you've completed entering your chosen name, press return to commit the change.

Naturally, you can double-click on any folder you have created and repeat this process to create additional folders within folders.

The final important item that we'll touch on is how to save files to your drive from within an application such as Word.

Select "Save As" from the File menu of any program. You will see a box similar to the one show on the above.

In the "Save In" line at the top of the box you'll see "Daisy on 'Lazlo' (F:)" listed. Your connection, of course, will be a different name, but should follow this same format.

Simply click in the "Save In" box, select your volume from the list and tap the "Save" button toward the bottom left of the window.

Opening files follows exactly the same procedure by using the "Open" menu rather than "Save" or "Save As".

You can also double-click on folder names that you see in the window to navigate more deeply into your Lazlo volume prior to hitting "Save".