Drive/folder/file sharing using XP PRO (1 Viewer)

[John Wilson]

My son has about 15GB worth of mp3 files that I would like access to but they are on his system running XP PRO. When he goes in as the admin and sets the folder in which the files reside as shared, I am denied access when I try to get into the folder from my XP PRO computer. I guess I don't really understand how the file-sharing process works in XP. I can access my wifes system running Win ME without problems.

What are the steps necessary to allow file sharing when both systems are running XP and the drives are both formatted as NTFS? The ME machine is FAT32.

Thanks for your help.:b

 

[Rob Gillespie]

You must have an account on the machine you're trying to get into. For instance, if you logon to your own PC with the username "John" then you must also have a corresponding "John" account on the other machine.

 

[Dave Gorman]

This article seems to do a good job of providing detailed step-by-step instructions for what you need to do. Hope it helps.

 

[KyleS]

Correct me if I am wrong Rob but you shouldnt need to create an entire account to just pull off information from the machine but you do need to have the proper rights on the machine to get to the shares. You should be able to add yourself to his machine by right-clicking on My computer and going to Manage. From there you can go to Local users and groups, Groups, and add yourself as an administrator or Power User on your sons machine.

KyleS

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Never tried that Kyle. The advantage to going the account route is that you can assign specific permissions to that account rather than just to the group. A bit overkill in this instance though

 

[Mike LS]

You shouldn't even have to do that if the machines are running on a simple network and on the same workgroup. As long as you have any login info for your sons machine, you can log in from anywhere on the network with that info. At least that's how all the networks I've set up work.
Also, if your sons machine is set to allow all access to all users, once you get in the first time, whenever you open the network folder, the shared folders on your network machines will be readily accessible without browsing for them. That's how my XP Pro - XP Pro machines have worked.

 

[Belgarath]

I have had similar problems when trying to set up a LAN with XP-machines.
In all occasions the build in firewall of XP was the cause.
Switch it off and everything should work fine.

Belgarath

 

[John Wilson]

Belgarath,
forgive my stupidity but can you give me a step-by-step procedure for ensuring that the XP firewall is disabled? I can't believe how much trouble I'm having just getting the file sharing to work! I like the enhanced security but not at the expense of not being able to do the simple stuff! Or maybe its just me:b

Regards

 

[Dave Gorman]

can you give me a step-by-step procedure for ensuring that the XP firewall is disabled?

Try this. Disabling instructions are at the bottom of the article.

 

[John_Berger]

Hey, Belgarath! Tell Polgara that I said "Hi" and to get rid of that stripe in her hair!

Anyway, this scenario is common on 2000 and XP, which is based on 2000. They've locked down security pretty nicely right out of the box to prevent people from just mounting drives. Since I refuse to work with XP, I can't vouch for the firewall issue; but user issues will very likely cause a problem as well.

If you log onto your machine with a user ID other than Administrator, the user ID that you use must be added to your son's system. I've run into this several times here at home which uses a mixed bag of operating systems. From 2000 to 2000, there are no problems since I log on as Administrator on all of them -- at least until the little urchin is old enough to do damage.

But if an XP/98/ME system attempts to connect, I have to make sure that the user on those machines is a local user on my system and is a member of the Users group (or whatever appropriate group) in order to gain access to the system.

 

[Belgarath]

If you log onto your machine with a user ID other than Administrator, the user ID that you use must be added to your son's system. I've run into this several times here at home which uses a mixed bag of operating systems. From 2000 to 2000, there are no problems since I log on as Administrator on all of them -- at least until the little urchin is old enough to do damage.

It should work without having to add the user to the other system, as long as the other system's sharing is set to "everyone".

Belgarath

 

[John_Berger]

It should work without having to add the user to the other system, as long as the other system's sharing is set to "everyone".

Not under Windows 2000. Microsoft changed the way that security works so that users need to be defined on the local station. We ran into this with dozens of systems at one place where I was contracted to. We ended up adding other people in the room to our systems in order to get them to connect if the other user did not have a Windows 2000 system. (XP is based off of 2000, not 9x, so it should still have the same kind of security.)

It also happened all of the time here at home when my system was the only one that used Windows 2000. But once I added the users locally and put them in the Guest group, all of the other PCs had access.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Would it work by enabling the Guest account and just entering 'Guest' and the password when connecting to it? Surely the whole point of the Guest account is to get around the need for having a local account.