C-drive folder won't share. What's 'C$'?

[George]

Using WinXP, simply want to allow C-drive on "PC#2" to be readable by PC#1.
But it "access denies" key user folders...where the real data is. Would
greatly appreciate suggestions. Is full access to a c-drive just not doable
at all in WinXP...it was very doable in Win98. Thanks.

WHAT DID SO FAR
-Simple file sharing didn't work, so unchecked it in My Computer > Tools >
Folder Options > View.
-Then right clicked c-drive on PC#2, selected "share this folder" and named
it "c-drive" but it keeps falling back to "C$" in there

WHAT HAPPENS
-PC#1 can read most things but not user folders like ...documents and
settings \ John Doe. Those are "access denied"...don't have permissions

 

[Ron Lowe]

Using WinXP, simply want to allow C-drive on "PC#2" to be readable by PC#1.
But it "access denies" key user folders...where the real data is. Would
greatly appreciate suggestions. Is full access to a c-drive just not doable
at all in WinXP...it was very doable in Win98. Thanks.

WHAT DID SO FAR
-Simple file sharing didn't work, so unchecked it in My Computer > Tools >
Folder Options > View.
-Then right clicked c-drive on PC#2, selected "share this folder" and named
it "c-drive" but it keeps falling back to "C$" in there

WHAT HAPPENS
-PC#1 can read most things but not user folders like ...documents and
settings \ John Doe. Those are "access denied"...don't have permissions

This is the default behaviour of Simple File Sharing
when used to share an NTFS drive.

Essentially, it's trying to protect users from themselves.
People often follow bad practice of sharing entire drives, etc.
Typically, there's not much reason to share those folders.

What Simple File Sharing has done is to set the NTFS
permissions on those folders to block 'Guest' network access.

You can, however, share sub-folders of these.

Possible workarounds:

1) On XP Pro, disable simple file sharing, and then explicitly set up the
permissions.

2) On XP Home, you can't do this. So there are a couple of possible kludges:

2.1) Reformat the drive as FAT, and re-install.
This is an ugly solution.

2.2) Boot to Safe mode, which allows access to the NTFS permissions.
Re-set the NTFS permissions to include Everyone.
Re-boot to normal mode.
Note that subsequent changes to the shares with Simple File Sharing
will reset the restricted permissions, requiring you to re-do this.

 

[George]

Thanks Ron,

In WinXP-pro, did try unchecking Simple File Sharing, then went to the
c-drive, right clicked, and selected "share this folder" and named it "C".
(Permissions were already by default set to Everybody/read only.)

Still denies access to the specific user folders under documents and
settings. Am I doing something incorrectly? Thanks.

 

[Ron Lowe]

Thanks Ron,

In WinXP-pro, did try unchecking Simple File Sharing, then went to the
c-drive, right clicked, and selected "share this folder" and named it "C".
(Permissions were already by default set to Everybody/read only.)

Still denies access to the specific user folders under documents and
settings. Am I doing something incorrectly? Thanks.

Yes, because there are NTFS permissions set on the subfolders.
These are in the Security tab of the folders.

If you set these to allow everyone access, then all users can see each
other's files!
is that really what you want?

Here's a step-by-step on setting up share permissions:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_filesharing/index.htm

 

[George]

Ron, thank you,

Actually, I do need to share the entire c-drive on the remote PC#2 so that a
Seagate backup tape (on PC#1) can access the whole c-drive and get all the
files. (This had worked great with a Win98 PC in a similar arrangement)

The idea was to just set "share whole c-drive" but nothing seems to work
down at the user folder level under documents and settings, unless I
individually set shares for each of those. There are 4 user accounts set up
on PC#2 (two have admin privileges, two do not). Seems like should be able
to just set one "parent" share...at c-drive level.

Another mystery is that, with just the one "parent" c-drive share, ONE of
the user account folders (documents and settings \ john doe) DOES share, but
not the other 3. The one good one has admin privileges, but the other one
with admin privileges is "access denied" so doesn't seem to be the admin
thing. Any suggestions welcomed. Thanks.

 

[Ron Lowe]

Ron, thank you,

Actually, I do need to share the entire c-drive on the remote PC#2 so that a
Seagate backup tape (on PC#1) can access the whole c-drive and get all the
files. (This had worked great with a Win98 PC in a similar arrangement)

The idea was to just set "share whole c-drive" but nothing seems to work
down at the user folder level under documents and settings, unless I
individually set shares for each of those. There are 4 user accounts set up
on PC#2 (two have admin privileges, two do not). Seems like should be able
to just set one "parent" share...at c-drive level.

Another mystery is that, with just the one "parent" c-drive share, ONE of
the user account folders (documents and settings \ john doe) DOES share, but
not the other 3. The one good one has admin privileges, but the other one
with admin privileges is "access denied" so doesn't seem to be the admin
thing. Any suggestions welcomed. Thanks.

It's just not as simple as that.

On an NTFS drive, the individual folders have individual permissions.
These are found on the Security tab.

What you have access to and what you don't depends on:
Who you are logged into PC1 as; and -
What share and NTFS permissions that user has on the target resource.

When you create a user account on XP using the simplified control panel
applet,
you can set up the user as being either Admin or Limited, the default is
Admin.

This creates a user profile ( documents+settings\joeblow ) which is
accessible by:
The User;
Administrators.

Notice that all administrator accounts can access all other user profiles.
That is, unless you use the option to mark the profile as 'Private'.

What that does is to remove Administrators from the
permissions, leaving it accessible to only:
The User.

So you need to be logging on to PC1 with a user account which is an
Administrator on PC2;
AND the Administrators group needs to be present in the NTFS permissions for
every folder you want to access.