Accessing Domain Resources with XP Home

[Bryan Linton]

My boss just bought a new home computer that of course came preloaded with
XP Home. I'd like to set up a VPN connection for him so he can log into our
network remotely and access domain resources (such as our management system
database application). His computer has Office 2003 Standard on it, and I'd
also like to configure his Outlook to connect to our Exchange 2003 server
using RPC over HTTP (I've done this for many of our XP Pro clients with
laptops, as well as my home computer running XP Pro). My question is, will
I need to upgrade his machine to Pro to enable some or any of this
functionality? I realize an XP Home machine cannot join a domain, but is
there any means by which it can access domain resources if proper domain
credentials are provided? Specifically, I want:

- Outlook's RPC over HTTP to work (so no VPN is needed simply to connect to
Exchange)
- To be able to access a shared network drive after establishing a VPN
connection, so he can access our management system database application.

Thanks in advance,
Bryan

 

[Massimo]

My boss just bought a new home computer that of course came preloaded with
XP Home. I'd like to set up a VPN connection for him so he can log into
our network remotely and access domain resources (such as our management
system database application). His computer has Office 2003 Standard on
it, and I'd also like to configure his Outlook to connect to our Exchange
2003 server using RPC over HTTP (I've done this for many of our XP Pro
clients with laptops, as well as my home computer running XP Pro). My
question is, will I need to upgrade his machine to Pro to enable some or
any of this functionality? I realize an XP Home machine cannot join a
domain, but is there any means by which it can access domain resources if
proper domain credentials are provided? Specifically, I want:

- Outlook's RPC over HTTP to work (so no VPN is needed simply to connect
to Exchange)
- To be able to access a shared network drive after establishing a VPN
connection, so he can access our management system database application.

As long as you supply proper credentials, you can log on to any
workstation/server you want, including domain members; if you try to access
a network share and your current username/password pair doesn't allow you to
access it, a logon box will pop up asking for them.
Never had any problems accessing network shares from a non-member computer.

Massimo