to do what you want you must have winXP professional on the machine who will setup this protection. by default winXP enables
simple sharing mode. we want to switch to
advanced sharing mode. this is setup almost the same way as win2000 and is many times more secure than password protection in winMillenium or win98.
open my computer select
tools> folder options. on the very last option in the list, uncheck
use simple sharing mode. on folders you want to share right click them and select
sharing & security. you will see you have new options.
you must duplicate the username and password of all users you want to share with and add them to this permission list. example:
computer1 is username: john, password: 1111
compuuer2 is username: bill, password: 2222
you want to share a folder on john's computer so bill can access it using advanced sharing mode.
on john's machine goto control panel> user accounts create a new limited account (instead of administrator account). give it the username bill and password: 2222. this must match bill's exact name and pass.
john can only add users from user accounts from his own machine. this is why we must duplicate bill's account on john's machine. setting it to limited means bill has limited access as opposed to the all powerful administrator privledges which has complete control over john's computer.
so back to the folder permissions. select everyone and click the remove button. everyone means anyone has permission to access the folder, we do not want this. click the add button and add bill to the permission list of that folder.
you can set all the other sharing options and click ok to apply those changes. in network neighborhood bill should now be able to access that folder. all other unauthorized user will get a permission denied warning message