The partition on the W2k machine can be NTFS and your 95/98/ME machines across the network will be able to see the information. The server service on the workstation will translate it for them. 9x/ME boxes cannot read local NTFS partitions.
NT/2k shares files/resources a bit differently from what you are used to with 9x/ME machines. What you need to do is create one or more user accounts on your W2k machine. Let?s call him Bubba just for the sake of having a name. So, in order to create an account for Bubba?
1. Right-click on My Computer and then select ?Manage? from the shortcut menu. This will open up the local computer management console.
2. In the left pane, drill down thru System Tools\Local Users and Groups\Users
3. Once you are there, you will most likely see 2 users there. Administrator and Guest. Administrator is most likely what you are logged in with now and the other is Guest. Guest will most likely be disabled (that?s what the red X indicates.)
4. Right click somewhere in the right pane and select ?New User?
5. Fill in the User Name as Bubba or a name of your choice. You don?t have to fill in the full name if you don?t want to. What you do need to decide is how strong do you want the security on your little home network? The easiest thing to do for the password is just to leave it blank. I will get to why, a little bit later. Don?t forget to remove the little check from the box for ?User must change password at next logon?. You may also want to check the boxes for ?User cannot change password? and ?Password never expires? is you so desire but that is totally up to you.
6. Click the create button and then click Close.
Now you will see that Bubba is listed in the list of users next to Administrator and Guest. You can repeat this procedure as many times as you want for however many users you want or you can just keep it simple with one user. Now, by default, Bubba will only be put into the ?Users? group. If you right-click on Bubba?s user account and select ?Properties? and then hit the ?Member of? tab, you will see Users. You can add him to other groups such as administrator if you wish. Remember that regular users are restricted from doing most things to the machine such as installing local printers, installing software, modifying the registry, etc. So this can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on who will be using your network machines. If you are just using the W2k machine to share the internet connection to a bunch of 9x/ME machines, and maybe share some files and a printer then you can probably leave Bubba as just a plain old user.
OK, still with me?? Good. Now that we have created an account for Bubba, we need to specify what Bubba has access to. To do this, follow these steps?
1. Figure out what folders on your machine you want to share out. Let?s say you want to share out the whole C drive on your W2k machine. This is not a real safe idea if Bubba is not to swift with computers but it will work as an example for this.
2. Open up Windows Explorer and find the C drive.
3. Right Click on the C drive and then select ?sharing? from the shortcut menu.
4. Once the sharing tab comes up, you are going to say to yourself ?Well, Mike you idiot it looks like it is already shared?. Well, the C drive and the Winnt drive have default shares setup. For the C drive it is shared as C$. The $ after the share name means that it is a hidden share and will not show up with people are browsing across the network. What we need to do is create a new share that we want Bubba to be able to see and use on the network.
5. Click on the ?New Share? button at the bottom.
6. In the New Share window, give it a name that you like. You can name it anything you want but try to keep it simple like Shared, Storage, or something easy to remember. You can even place a comment if you so desire but it is not needed.
7. Click on the ?Permissions? button.
8. On the permissions window you will find that Everyone has access to the share that you just created. That means exactly what it says. Everyone has access to this folder whether they be the lowest user or the most powerful admin on your network. On a small home network, and to start off with, Everyone is just fine so just hit OK.
9. Click OK on the sharing tab.
Now comes the part where Bubba is back at his machine and wants to access the folder that you just setup for him to access. When I used to run 9x/ME machines on my home network, the easiest setup I found to be the following.
1. On the 9x/ME machines, configure them to use ?Logon for Microsoft Networking? in the network properties.
2. Log off of the machines and log on using Bubba as the user name and blank password.
3. Once you have logged in as Bubba, you should be able to go thru network neighborhood to find the W2k machine and then you should be able to see the share that you created a while ago in this really long post. You should not be prompted for any login to use the share since you already logged in as Bubba and Bubba has a user account on the W2k box.
If you really want to get crazy with things, you can get TweakUI and configure the 9x/ME boxes to auto login so you don?t have to log on when you reboot your 9x/Me boxes. I never did since, I only rebooted my machines when absolutely necessary so it really didn?t bother me to hit enter to logon to them.
Sharing a printer works pretty much the same way as creating a folder share. Just right click on the printer and select sharing. Give it a name, and then install the drivers on the client machine that will be connecting to it.
Hope this helps.
-Mike
PS, have you thought about joining the Team Anandtech Distributed Computing team? There are lots of people that would be more than happy to help you with your network setup. Check things out
here or drop by the Distributed Computing forum. We would be glad to have you on the team!!!
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