MSHome Network Privacy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Hallett
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Peter Hallett

I have a LAN in which 3 users need to share the whole of their My Documents
folders, which should not be visible to the other users on the network. It
is important that sharing between these users should be as convenient as
possible. Having to enter a password every time one user accesses another's
computer would be very inconvenient, for example. Is their a way of doing
this on an MSHome network?
 
Peter said:
I have a LAN in which 3 users need to share the whole of their My Documents
folders, which should not be visible to the other users on the network. It
is important that sharing between these users should be as convenient as
possible. Having to enter a password every time one user accesses another's
computer would be very inconvenient, for example. Is their a way of doing
this on an MSHome network?
Click to expand...

XP Home does not permit sharing user's home directories (My Documents)
although it will allow sharing of folders inside those directories. A
better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder instead.


Malke
 
Malke said:
XP Home does not permit sharing user's home directories (My Documents)
although it will allow sharing of folders inside those directories. A
better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder instead.
Click to expand...

I realized that I hadn't answered your question about privacy. You can't
get what you want with XP Home because XP Home connects always as Guest
and you don't have the ability to set fine-grained
permissions/restrictions that you have in XP Pro. If this is a business
environment, then you should upgrade to XP Pro. You will then be able to
set permissions on folders that will restrict access to those users who
should have access.


Malke
 
That's very helpful. If it is not too much trouble, I wonder if you could
give me a little more detail. I am currently using an XP Home computer on
the network but the users that need to hide their My Documents folders from
other users have XP Pro, so that looks like good news. Unfortunately, those
machine are not currently accessible to me. Could you therefore give me a
brief idea of how the XP Pro computers need to be set up to achieve the
necessary privacy? (Obviously I can't immediately see the necessary steps on
my Home machine.)

We are already using the Shared Documents folder to exchange essential
documents, which are then moved into My Documents. There is no difficulty in
doing that but there is a need to hide the latter.
 
Peter said:
That's very helpful. If it is not too much trouble, I wonder if you could
give me a little more detail. I am currently using an XP Home computer on
the network but the users that need to hide their My Documents folders from
other users have XP Pro, so that looks like good news. Unfortunately, those
machine are not currently accessible to me. Could you therefore give me a
brief idea of how the XP Pro computers need to be set up to achieve the
necessary privacy? (Obviously I can't immediately see the necessary steps on
my Home machine.)

We are already using the Shared Documents folder to exchange essential
documents, which are then moved into My Documents. There is no difficulty in
doing that but there is a need to hide the latter.
Click to expand...

Sure, here's a rough idea. Mind you, this is based on the assumption
that you have a small office with just a few computers.
We'll leave the XP Home machine out of the equation. For a very small
peer-to-peer network (say 3 or 4 computers):

1. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines because
in a peer-to-peer network (as opposed to a domain) authentication is
done on the local machine.

2. Then create user groups if desired and put users into those groups.

3. For shared resources, you can set access by user and/or by group.
Users who don't have permission to read a particular folder will be
denied access.

In an office situation, I prefer to have no data on the local computers
whatsoever. Instead, depending on the number of workstations involved, I
set up a pseudo-server running XP Pro (or even Linux) and use it as a
file server and for backups. For situations with over 7 machines, it's
time to look at Small Business Server (or Linux). Then you control
permissions from one place instead of from many. With XP Pro, you can
easily move the local machines' My Documents to the "server" so that
things look seamless to the end user.


Malke
 
I am most grateful for that. Your suggestions fit nicely with the current
LAN architecture and should meet the requirement very nicely. Many thanks.
 
Peter said:
I am most grateful for that. Your suggestions fit nicely with the current
LAN architecture and should meet the requirement very nicely. Many thanks.
Click to expand...

You're very welcome. I forgot to mention that with XP Pro you should
turn off Simple File Sharing from Folder Options>View.


Malke
 
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