Read Only For Everyone

Problem: I recently shared a directory on an XP workstation and granted a specific domain user write access to the shared directory (NTFS write access). The user with the write access attempted to create a file in the shared directory and got "access denied".

Solution: I changed the Share permissions from Everyone having Read Only access, to Everyone having Full Control.

If you're an old NT techie you'll remember that before XP Service Pack 1, the default access for shares was Everyone - Full Control. We usually left the share permissions Full Control and assigned the appropriate permissions at the NTFS level. We did this to keep from confusing ourselves with conflicting permissions resulting in problems like the one above. Well, SP1 reversed this default to: Everyone - Read Only, and as we all know, NT security enforces the most restrictive access between the Share permissions and the NTFS permissions. So, when sharing data on XP, make sure the share permissions are either the same or less restrictive than the NTFS permissions. (Then you'll be able to sleep at night..... :o)