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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
April 27,
2008
Q.
With Windows versions before XP it was easy
to password protect shared folders on my
network, but it does not seem possible with
XP. How can password protect shared folders
on XP and Vista?
A.
Many home networks are wireless, and in
addition to providing access to all the
computers on the network, they also provide
Internet access. To allow any user access
the Internet, but not access the other
computers on the network, it may be desired
to password protect these other networked
computers.
As you
mentioned, this chore was easy in earlier
Windows versions, but is difficult and
poorly documented in XP Professional and
theoretically impossible in XP Home. But
there's a workaround. (Isn't there always?)
When someone accesses your computer over a
local network, XP provides access through
the Guest account, even if that account is
turned off. So if you password-protect the
Guest account, you effectively
password-protect network access to your PC.
Sounds
easy enough, but there is no direct way to
password protect your guest account. Other
accounts, including the Administrator
account allow setting changing, or removing
a password fairly easy in the Control Panel,
but not so with the user account. To do
this, we have to use the "net" commands. If
you are not familiar with Window's Net
Commands, click
HERE to
learn more about them or at the Run dialog,
enter cmd, then at the command prompt, enter
net help.
Be aware,
the net commands are a powerful set of
commands that can make many changes to the
way your computer works. Since these are all
used from the command prompt, understanding
them may not be easy. Using the net
commands, like editing the registry, should
never be done experimentally.
On the XP
computer you wish to password protect, click
Start, then Run, then type in this without
the quotes; "net user guest password", where
the word password is replaced with whatever
you want to use for the password. Click OK
and then reboot the computer.
From now on, visitors trying to log on to
this computer from another computer on the
network will run into a dialog box asking
for the username and password. Without it,
they can't log on. For the username, they
will have to use a user account name that is
active on that XP computer. I have found
that administrator works most of the time.
For the password, use whatever you selected
when you set it up. There are a couple of
caveats, however.
First,
visitors must first access your PC through
Windows and get logged on before they will
be able to access it through an application,
which opens a password dialog box
automatically.
Second,
the host's Guest account must be turned off.
This is the default setting when XP is
installed so unless you have turned it on
for some reason, this should not be a
problem. If it is on, use the Control
Panel, User Accounts, Guest, to turn it off.
To remove
this password, use the same net command, but
leave the password blank like this, again
without the quotes "net user guest "
Now, to
set a password to protect shared folders on
Vista, open the Control Panel, then the
Network and Sharing Center, locate the
"Password Protected Sharing" item and turn
it on. While you have the Sharing Center
open, check out all the rest of the settings
you can make there. |
