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).
