XP Home as a "Workgroup Server"

[David]

I am trying to help out some folks with a small office which has a machine
running XP Home and 2 machines running W98 and no money to spend. I would
like to set it up so that sensitive data is stored on the XP machine in
NTFS, using workgroup style user and group access rights.
Does XP Home support network users and groups in this way? I have not
worked in an environment without a domain controller in so long that I just
do not know. I could get them to spring for an upgrade to XP Pro on the
machine running XP Home if necessary, but I doubt that the 2 W98 machines
have enough muscle to run XP even if they have the money. I am sure that I
could have done this with W2000 on one machine and XP on the other 2, I
assume that XP Professional can do it. I just have no clue about what is
not included in the Home edition.

 

[Malke]

I am trying to help out some folks with a small office which has a
machine
running XP Home and 2 machines running W98 and no money to spend. I
would like to set it up so that sensitive data is stored on the XP
machine in NTFS, using workgroup style user and group access rights.
Does XP Home support network users and groups in this way? I have not
worked in an environment without a domain controller in so long that I
just
do not know. I could get them to spring for an upgrade to XP Pro on
the machine running XP Home if necessary, but I doubt that the 2 W98
machines
have enough muscle to run XP even if they have the money. I am sure
that I could have done this with W2000 on one machine and XP on the
other 2, I
assume that XP Professional can do it. I just have no clue about what
is not included in the Home edition.

Sure, this should work. Home allows 5 simultaneous connections and Pro
allows 10. Note that "connections" does not mean users and if a
computer is using more than one resource, it will have more than one
connection. Be sure to create user accounts/passwords on the XP box
that match the Win98 boxen, enable file/printer sharing, and share out
some resources. The easiest thing to do would be to have the XP box run
some sort of inexpensive backup software like SecondCopy
(www.centered.com) that copies the Win98 data each night.

Malke