Password Protecting Drive on XP-Pro

calleyw

This is a question on behalf of someone else.

They have network of 4 machines 2 on XP-Pro and another two on Win2000.

Anyway they want to restrict access to one machine from the others. Allowing access from one other by setting up password protection.

Now I do now a bit about computers but not networks and not XP-Pro as I use Xp-Home.

I assume that is all to do with "simple file sharing" stuff. Is there a step by step instructions as I need to pass these on in printed version as this a friend of a friend type thing.

I have had a google and found thisand it sort of answers some of the the above question. But I don't think it answers the second part of setting up a password on the hard drive so that only that user with the password can access that drive.

Or maybe it does and I am having a funny 5 mins and can't see it.

Thanks in advance.


Yours


Calley

calleyw

Is this really hard question or something.

I am sure that other people must have password protected there hard drives.

Anyone, anywhere.


Yours


Calley

Chippy_Minton

One way of doing this is to set things up so that when a user attempts to access a shared folder on the restricted machine, a Windows username and password prompt appears:

Are the computers in a domain or in a workgroup? If the latter, this is how I would proceed (do all the following on the machine you want to restrict access to):

1. Disable Simple File Sharing.
2. Create a new user account 'X' with password. This could be the same name as a user account on the client machine trying to gain access or a different name.
3. Set up Access Control Lists on the share folders and files to give access to 'X'. Make sure that the Everyone group isn't in the list.

All these steps are described on Windows XP Professional File Sharing.
See also How to configure file sharing in Windows XP.