[cRackeR]

Hey i have a some ?'s on network passwords, i have windows XP pro and i have a file server, a main computer and some others and i want the main computer's harddrive to have a password and some of the folders in it have passwords too, and whoever is on the network would have to log in to get into the harddrive or folders , how do i go about doing this ? i thought it was right in the sharing options but i must be wrong ...

[cRackeR]

*bump*

I was told from a friend (MarkoDaGeek), that I was going to get a quick responce on this site ...

Anyone ?

[Thorian]

Ill check, when I get home. and let you know

[cRackeR]

[Thorian]

Now if you want them to log into a Domain that is a book unto its self if you want to suppluy a password then that can be set in Group policy gpedit.msc -> computer configuration->windows settings -account policys -> password policy

Now mind you that I just copied that out of A book ( Xp in a nutshell ) I went throught the above and it looks like that will take care of your problem however I have no way to test the theory only 1 xp workstation

[Vetritus03]

so i assume you have at least one client and a "Server" machine setup... you are correct to set this all up in sharing/permissions. please make sure you have disabled simple file sharing in XP... its like the last option in folder options.
to set up the harddrive access share the drive and set the users who are allowed to access the drive. usually all the users on the server are allowed into it as Administrators (local machine\Administrators), Creator Owner, Everyone, System, and Users (local machine\Users) are given permissions to the drive by default. the default share name will generally be (drive letter)$. this is an administrative share... looks like this:



if you look under the security tab at this point you will see the following users/groups are given access to this share by default:



you will need to create a new share for this drive and assign permissions to the new share:



if you click on the permissions button for the new share you will have simply:



you will want to add the Administrators group to this so you can be sure that you as Admin can access this share from any location:



at this point we will set up the share to individual user access. since i am working on my client machine i will be using Remote Desktop to give you screenies of how i set up my file sharing. you will notive that the file server is running in the Windows Classic theme so it should be easy to tell the difference.
i've already shown you the screens from how i set the drive up to be shared. if you want to limit the users who are actually able to access the drive you will do this under the security tab.



as you can see i have this drive set to allows the local Administrator as well as the local Administrators group (this is redundant as the Administrator is a member of the Administrators group), Everyone, and SYSTEM. if you want to limit the access to individual users, you would remove the Administrators group and Everyone and specify the users you want individually. of course, since you're prolly only running XP client on both machines and don't have your users in an active directory you will have to specify local users on the server machine to have access. this is ok, because when your remote users logon they will specify a username/password that will give them limited local access. i suppose this would be a good time to make sure you have your users added to the server. you can easily specify the user's permission levels in the local users and groups snap-in (start -> run -> MMC -> file -> add snap-in -> local users and groups)
now that that is taken care of we move on. here it gets hairy, so hold on!
on the security tab you also have an Advanced button at the bottom. this will be important once you lock down all of your users. if you are going to be specifying passwords to folders for privacy you will want to make sure that no one but the user in question can get into the folder, but what happens if something goes wrong? you want to be able to access and modify it too don't you? i mean... you are the admin right? ok, so click on advanced and choose the owner tab. be sure your user name is on the list. this will ensure that you can take control of the share at any time.



ok, so the way i have mine set up i allow every one with computer access (username/password authenticated of course) access to this drive. i have all my MP3z on here, so i want them to be shared to everyone. i also have some individual folders shared to just myself and one to my roomate. these are authenticated by username/password as well, but when i try to access his folder logged into my user i get an access denied message:



i assume this is what you want. this will also work for the drive itself, but like i said i am limiting to folders on my machine. now, as i have the drive shared to those i want to give access i didn't have to touch the folders i wanted people to have free access to as they were already authenticated by the drive's share security. for my roomate's folder (here called Gary) the security tab and the advanced options are shown. notice ONLY the user gary is listed, yet my username is listed as an owner.



my folder looks similar, but the Administrator username is also listed in security as i want access to my files even if i am logged into the Administrator account.

i hope that wasn't too quick and dirty for ya. if you have any other issues post away.

[MarkoDaGeek]

Wow man , my hats off to you, you should make this into a tut and submit it, looks like you put a lot of work into this , cRackeR is a friend of mine im sure he will be thrilled when he sees such a good discription, i would have told him myself but we use 3rd party software at work and i have no idea on how to do it on XP, never really needed to but now i know as well, nice work.

... Thankyou

[Vetritus03]

well, i had the same question when i set up 2k and then XP. the hardest part in xp was disabling the simple file sharing. once that is done the rest was trial and error. thus why i set myself as owner on EVERYTHING so once i lock myself out of another user's folder i can always get back in if i really need to. i'm sure i missed a few steps, but as best i can recall that's how i did it. i've been in San Francisco these last few days so i appologise for the delay... he seemed to be upset that we weren't solving his issue in 30 minutes or less... but, hell this aint domino's

[Thorian]

Damn Vetritus. you da man.

[Vetritus03]

if anyone wants to make this into a tutorial... feel free to take the screens i've already provided. i don't have the time right now to re-create the exact steps needed to provide everyone with the details needed for specific setups. if anyone wants to edit this post to add the missing info where necessary feel free... simply note the change you made.

[cRackeR]

Wow, thanks Vetritus man i had some problems with

"(start -> run -> MMC -> file -> add snap-in -> local users and groups)
now that that is taken care of we move on. "

but i got it figured out, Mark came over and helped.

thanks again Vetritus

[Vetritus03]

no sweat.