Sharing Disks and Folders on Windows XP


Once the network has been checked / configured, you can access other systems via
My Network Places
To allow other systems to access data on your disks / in your folders, you have to give
Permission for this : you have to share your disks and/or folders :
(the procedure for sharing on the Professional Edition is different to Sharing on XP Home )
Select the disk to be shared (for example in “My Computer”) and right-click on the icon
of the disk to get the Context / popup-menu, select “Sharing and Security” :

Unlike the XP Home-Edition, where the system will display
some additional information concerning security issues,
you are as a user of Windows XP Professional expect to
know what you are doing and you have to handle yourself
any seruity issue
Sharing only folders is more
selective and not such a high
security problem :
Once you have selected the
folder to be shared, make
either a Right-click to select
“Sharing and Security…”
or select from the
“File and Folder Tasks”
(on the left side) to :
“Share this folder”
If you have installed Windows XP Professional
and you get this windows for Sharing, then your
system is configured for “Simple File Sharing
(same method as in Sharing for Windows XP Home) :
(see also Windows XP Simple Sharing and ForceGuest of
the Windows XP Professional Resource Kit )

Your choice :
You can follow the suggestion of Microsoft
and work also on Windows XP Professional
with “Simple File Sharing“, then please
follow the procedure for Sharing on
Windows XP Home.

Or you can turn off “Simple File Sharing
and work with File-Sharing like on
Windows 2000
( shown below) .
Open “My Comuter” and select from the
menu “Tools” to Display the “Folder Options…” :

Tab : “View”, section “Advanced settings” :
Look for “Use simple file sharing (Recommended”
To deactivate the “Simple File Sharing”,
uncheck the option :

The process of sharing a disk or folder is identical
to the procedure used on Windows NT4 and Windows 2000.
There is already an “invisible” disk-sharing (C$, D$,…),
allowing network administrator to access the disk.
To create a share, which will be displayed in the
Network Neighborhood, create a “New Share”.
Enter the name of the share, as to be used on the network
and as to be displayed in the Network Neighborhood.
You can change the “Permisisons”
By default, all users defined on your XP Professional
system will have full permisisons.
You can reduce the permissons (for example to allow
only Read-access ) and/or you could add a different
group of users to have access permisison (but then you
should delete the group “Everyone” from this list).
You can then select the different share-names from
the drop-down list, to be able to view/modify the
permissions or to remove the sharing.

Once a disk or folder is shared, the icon will show it via the “holding hand :”

On NTFS disks / partitions, you can also controll access via Security.
You can check the usage of the shared resource via the network (files used, users connected).

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