Cannot access My Documents folder of other computer

Hi. I helped set up a File and Printer Sharing network from my
brother's WinXP Home desktop to his WinXP Home wireless laptop. He
chose to share the entire C drive on both. For some reason the laptop
can see everything on the desktop's C drive except the My Documents
folder. Nor can he see the laptop's My Document's folder from the
desktop. Both accounts are set as Administrator.

I navigated to the desktop's Owner folder under Documents and Setting
and right-clicked on the My Document's folder to explicitly set the
sharing checkbox. However, even though the sharing icon showed up on
the folder, I still could not see the folder on the laptop computer.
Any assistance on resolving this issue would be appreciated. Thanks.

M.L.

In article <>, M.L.
<> wrote:
>
>Hi. I helped set up a File and Printer Sharing network from my
>brother's WinXP Home desktop to his WinXP Home wireless laptop. He
>chose to share the entire C drive on both. For some reason the laptop
>can see everything on the desktop's C drive except the My Documents
>folder. Nor can he see the laptop's My Document's folder from the
>desktop. Both accounts are set as Administrator.
>
>I navigated to the desktop's Owner folder under Documents and Setting
>and right-clicked on the My Document's folder to explicitly set the
>sharing checkbox. However, even though the sharing icon showed up on
>the folder, I still could not see the folder on the laptop computer.
>Any assistance on resolving this issue would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'm sorry, but that's how Windows XP Home Edition works when it's
installed on an NTFS disk partition. It blocks access to the Program
Files and Windows folders and to individual users' folders within
Documents and Settings.

You can share subfolders within those folders, e.g. you can share
"C:\Program Files\Outlook Express" or "C:\Documents and
Settings\Username\Desktop" and access that folder from another
computer on the network.

If you had Windows XP Professional, you could disable simple file
sharing, which would remove those sharing restrictions. Since you
have Windows XP Home Edition, that option isn't available The safest
thing is to share individual subfolders, as mentioned above, or to
move files into the Shared Documents folder, which was designed for
that purpose and is accessible over the network.

You can re-install the operating system on a FAT or FAT32 disk
partition -- those disk formats don't have any sharing restrictions.
However, that would lose the benefits of NTFS, which is more reliable
and efficient and can use larger disks. You'd also need to re-install
all of your applications.

I've heard of two possible solutions for XP Home Edition on an NTFS
disk partition, but:

1. They're un-supported, un-documented, and un-tested by Microsoft.
2. There's no guarantee that they'll work.
3. They might cause data loss or corruption.

I haven't tried them, and I don't know whether they're safe. If you
want to try them, at your own risk:

1. Back up your important data first so that you can restore it in
case of problems.

2. Run System Restore to create a restore point that you can go back
to in case of problems.

Here they are:

1. Start Windows XP in "Safe Mode with Networking" (which temporarily
disables "Simple File Sharing"), share the desired folder(s), set the
permissions, and reboot normally, or:

2. Follow the procedure shown here:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_home_sectab.htm
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
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Steve Winograd [MVP]