Use Synergy on a computer on a workgroup and a laptop on a different domain

So, I recently installed synergy because I was tired of using two mice and keyboards. Problem is, set up is not working. First, the setup.

Server:
Desktop
Windows 7 64 - on our home network, part of Workgroup: WORKGROUP

Client:
work issued lapto开发者_开发问答p
Windows XP SP2 32 - on home network, part of workd Domain: DOMAIN

Server is set up, all the computer names are correct. I'm a bit of a noob at networking things, and I don't want to mess up the configuration of my work laptop again (I already switched the domain to my workgroup, BAD). So, any suggestions that aren't too crazy please, since it's a company laptop.

I've tried putting in the ip on the client as well, firewall is allowing on the port in use, just can't get it to work. I think I'm SOL with the Workgroup/Domain difference though...

From what I remember, Synergy doesn't care about the workgroup and/or domain, it just needs to be able to communicate with the server/client IPs. Did you try to manually insert IPs of client/server?

In a very similar situation I discovered that when trying to ping my non-domain desktop with its workgroup name the dns resolver was appending the work domain to the desktops name. So when I tried synergy with an IP address I successfully connected the two computers.

The only caveat I can offer is maybe you needed to add the application to the windows firewall exception list for both machines. I would assume the port setting was the same between the two computers (default is 24800) in which case you should only use the IP address because the application knows to access 24800 via that setting in the advanced configuration.

You can add the program to the whitelist or specifically the port if you prefer via the Windows Firewall. On a side note - I am also using an older version of synergy (1.3.1) and not the latest as of this answer (1.4.2 Beta) which did not work for me, but I will assume it's because my server was running 1.3.1.

I chose not to update all 6 machines and their respective horrific configuration constructs that synergy loves to enforce upon us. [caution... rant: x is left of y and y is right of x... really? are you sure about that Einstein? Synergy could at least INFER that bit of logic instead of REQUIRING it!]

Hope that helps.