F. Smith said:
First of all, I think it's great that you've created this document to help
everyone with this same problem, and simply inexcusable that Microsoft has
actually removed functionality with XP.
At any rate, none of your solutions seem to handle my situation very well,
unless I'm missing something. As it stands, we've got a lab full of nice
machines and one stupid 266MHz Windows 98 "server" there for the sole
purpose of sharing a folder.
There's a lot of traffic through the lab, so setting up accounts for
individual users is not practical.
In the past, a presenter would throw whatever they want into a folder on
the server. All the lab machines have links on the desktop that point
straight to the server. A one-off password is created by the user at the
time of the presentation (if he cares), and the password is given out to
everyone in the room.
The folder is read-only for networked users, and obviously writeable for
the presenter sitting at the server.
None of your solutions seem to handle this situation gracefully, since the
beauty of the current system is that the presenter doesn't need to know any
special passwords, but he can set one up for the day (for users) while he's
there, in case the lab is being shared that day.
Any ideas for a plan that would deal with this situation?
It's a real shame that something so simple seems almost impossible to accomplish.
I've tried a couple third-party solutions that allow you to slap passwords
on folders, but they're all pretty rickety, and none of them allow for the
freedom of the presenter to know no password. Additionally, (and this is
also the problem with the compressed zip solution), anyone who knows the
password can modify the files, so it's not at all safe from
ignorant/mischievious users.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping it's not going
to require a continued need for the Win98 machine, but if that's what it
takes, we can live with that.
How about just having all the lab machines log on as
the same username ( LabUser, for example. )
You could use auto-logon, if you like, so they boot right to the desktop.
( This would require you to create a user account
on each machine and the server machine called 'LabUser'. )
Then, the directory is shared with share permissions for 'LabUser'.
If you wanted to prevent the students grabbing the stuff untill the
appropriate time, then you'd need to remove their share permissions untill
the right time, then go and change the share permissions. ).