Password protect shared folder?

[greygoosemaster]

First,
If I'm posting this in the wrong area, I apologize. Please feel free to direct to the correct area.
So here is my problem, I inherited a network in which all desktops are XP Media Center and are not on a domain. I have one user who needs share some very sensivtive information with two other users. Currently, the PC is setup just to share the folder thus making it visible (and available) to anyone on the network. How can I grant protected access to the two users and make the folder unavailable to anyone else? Thanks.

 

[greygoosemaster]

UPDATE: by following some advice in this forum, I have implemented some steps that appear to be taking me in the right direction but I'm still not there.
Here's what I've done thus far:
1. I activated the guest account and put a password on it.
2. When I created the shared folder, I put a "$" following the share name. Though it shows up in "my network places", when access is attempted from any pc, an arror message states that the resouce is not available (this is good)
3. When I try to access the shared folder by doing Start>>run>>\\pcname\share, i am denied access. However, if I do Start>>run>>\\IP Address\share, I am prompted for a password (this too is good). But after a successful username/password, it tells me the drive cannot be found.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[fredweston]

Long term? You need to ditch media center and get on XP Pro with a domain type setup. I have next to no experience with XP Home/Media Center, but in XP Pro you can disable simple file sharing, which essentially requires anyone that shares to your computer to have an account on your computer to log on with.

Under Windows Explorer, go to the tools menu, then folder options, and then all the way at the bottom is where the option is in XP Pro to disable SFS. Note that turning it off disables the "easy" sharing where you just click the checkbox to share a folder on the network. You actually have to assign permissions to the folder and the share with it disabled.

Then right-click my computer and select manage. Under users and groups, create user accounts for those that need to access your shares. Once you created the accounts, then you would assign them permission to the share.

 

[seankubin]

You can join media center to the domain, It takes about 30 minutes per machine.
here are instructions:

http://extended64.com/blogs/rafael/pages/404.aspx

if bad link google search " media center domain banana "
without qoutes.

 

[conichi]

Hello,

Check this... http://www.lancelhoff.com/how-to-password-protect-a-shared-folder/

it is the solution.

Best regards, Cristian Conitzer

 

[pyropenguin]

Long term? You need to ditch media center and get on XP Pro with a domain type setup. I have next to no experience with XP Home/Media Center, but in XP Pro you can disable simple file sharing, which essentially requires anyone that shares to your computer to have an account on your computer to log on with.

Under Windows Explorer, go to the tools menu, then folder options, and then all the way at the bottom is where the option is in XP Pro to disable SFS. Note that turning it off disables the "easy" sharing where you just click the checkbox to share a folder on the network. You actually have to assign permissions to the folder and the share with it disabled.

Then right-click my computer and select manage. Under users and groups, create user accounts for those that need to access your shares. Once you created the accounts, then you would assign them permission to the share.

Windows Media Center is a version of Windows XP Pro with added functionality (i.e. Media Center) , it will work fine

 

[belashew]

You can just set a password for your shared folder, have you tried? And you also can try a third party tool.

protect shared folder