Sharing files in Vista

[Rebel7254]

I've posted about this on the MS Windows Vista newsgroups, but haven't received any replies. I thought I'd give it a shot here, too.

I like to have my desktop PC at home set to show the welcome screen when the
screen saver comes on. To log back into Windows, you have to enter your
password.

I have a simple wireless network that includes a desktop PC upstairs,
running Vista, and a laptop that is usually downstairs running XP. When I
had XP on both machines, I could access shared folders from the laptop that
were located on the desktop as long as somebody was logged into Windows on
the desktop machine. It did not matter if it was locked by virtue of the
screen saver activation.

With Vista, I cannot access shared folders when the desktop is locked
without entering a username and password. This is annoying and I don't know
where to go to fix this problem. The intent of locking the desktop once the
screen saver kicks in is to prevent someone from else from getting to my
personal files, not prohibit access to shared folders.

I have set the file sharing options as follows:
Network discovery: On
File Sharing: On
Public folder sharing: On (read only)
Printer sharing: On
Password protected sharing: Off
Media sharing: Off

Could somebody tell me if there is a way to get it back to how it was with
XP?

 

[JackMDS]

With the need to hence security Vista is not going to be like XP. Some of the bypass ?Tricks? that is possible to configure with Win XP are cannot available in Vista.

May be this can Help, http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articl.../File-Print-Sharing-Windows-Vista.html

 

[NuroMancer]

Jack you are the king of useful links.

 

[Rebel7254]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
With the need to hence security Vista is not going to be like XP. Some of the bypass ?Tricks? that is possible to configure with Win XP are cannot available in Vista.

May be this can Help, http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articl.../File-Print-Sharing-Windows-Vista.html

I'm not an experienced admin, so most of the link was over my head, though it sounded like that I should be able to freely share whatever is in the "Public" folder. Naturally I assumed this when I set up the network, so I put the files I wanted to share with Everyone in the "Public" folder. However, I can't get into anything on the desktop without logging into it w/ username and password when it is locked. I should not have to login to the desktop when a folder is supposed to be available to everyone on the network.