Home Networking With XP

Problem: All I was trying to do is share one directory from an XP machine to another user on the home network, running Windows 2000. Both machines were connected to a Linksys router. Simple, eh? That's what I thought.

I did all the normal things:

1. Turned on File and Print Sharing on the XP machine.
2. Made sure both machines were in the same workgroup.
3. Verified that both machines were set to get an IP address via DHCP.
4. The machines were not in a domain but the user needing access to the share had a local userid on both the XP machine and W2K machine (same user name).
5. Unchecked the use simple file sharing box in the folder options, so that we would see the Sharing and Security tabs on the folder and file properties.
6. Shared the directory on the XP machine. Changed the share permissions to allow Everyone Full Control (been burned by that one before).
7. Attempted to set the NTFS permissions, but found that the C drive was FAT32. Ran a Convert to get us on NFTS and then set the NTFS permissions to allow Everyone Full Control.
8. Checked the XP Firewall settings and made sure that file and print sharing was allowed.
9. Yes, I even made sure both machines were plugged into the network.

And..... you guessed it; it didn't work. The W2K user didn't have permission to access the share. It made no sense; Everyone had Full Control.

Solution: A little investigation showed that the user wasn't using a password on either machine. We simply gave her a password on the XP machine and she was able to connect to the share from the W2K machine. Go figure......