Connecting to XP Home/Pro Share!

[MrChris]

When connecting to a remote share on a XP Home or Pro share is prompts to logon, which is fine but it has GUEST as the user name and it is grayed out all I can out in is the password for the guest account.

How can I change this so that I can put in any user name and password that is valid on the system without using the command prompt NET USER N: \\MACHINE\SHARE?

Thanks,

MrChris

[Mr Snrub]

Disable "Simple File Sharing".

In Explorer, click Tools / Folder Options, then go to the View tab, scroll to the bottom of the list.

Untick "Use simple file sharing (recommended)" and it won't use the Guest account by default when accessing SMB shares.

[jp73]

The "enable simple file sharing" tick box is only available in XP Pro, it isn't there in XP home.

If you have XP home and an NTFS file system, there are ways of getting to the proper NTFS file permissions as described in...

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xpperm/xpPerm1.htm

run the "shrpubw" command (from the "run" line) and you can share a folder with proper permissions

reboot into safe mode and in the properties sharing tab you can set permissions

However neither of these will disable "simple file sharing" and although you can set access rights for individual users on the folder on the sharing PC anyone accessing shares over the network will still be logged in as "guest" and if "guest" or "everyone" doesn't have rights to access the folder they'll get "access denied" - even if they logged onto their computer as a user (with the same password) who has access rights to the folder on the sharing PC.

I haven't managed to disable simple file sharing yet - i think you need to do the following registry change:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]

"forceguest"=dword:00000000

(backup your registry before making any changes and create an XP restore point as well!!)

(it starts off as "1" on XP home)

(it is "1" on XP Pro when "simple file sharing" is on, and it's "0" on XP Pro when "simple file sharing" has been turned off)

i did this on mine and it isn't enough to turn off "simple file sharing" anyone accessing the PC over the network was still coming in as "guest"

Does anyone know what needs doing next. It may be something to do with "guest" or "everyone" rights or another registry change?

By the way if you go into users and groups and de-activate the guest account it only de-activates the local login - if anyone accesses a folder shared on the network from your PC they still get logged in as "guest"

One thing you can do to limit network access is set a password on the "guest" account - then anyone accessing over the network needs that password... to set the password open a command prompt and use the "net user" command:

type:

net help user

to get info on using the command

type:

net user guest *

and you'll be asked to enter a password for user guest

type

net user guest

and you'll get info on the user "guest"

you may also need to require a password - type:

net user guest /passwordreq:yes