On a local network, are you able to password protect certain folders and how (in windows xp)?

Question

I have a local network set up for my small office which consists of me, the manager, my wife, the secretary, and a few sales people/others. I would like to share passwords over the network and other such things privately to my wife, the secretary, but would not like the sales people and others to have access to it, yet I need the others to have access to other folders/documents that I'd like to share. How would I go about doing this if not by password?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I would setup a domain controller on this network providing it does not have one already. You can then setup some network shares and restrict access based on groups.

They talk about the sharing with regards to groups here.

How to share Files with Group permisions

Answer 2

Assuming one of the computers on your LAN is acting as a peer server, right click My Computer, go into Manage. Then go into Local Users and Groups and create several groups - Sales, Admin... whatever groups you want. Then add users and their passwords you want to have access to your system. From there, add those users into the different groups they belong to.

Then create different share folders on your peer server. Share the folders and under the permissions, REMOVE Everyone and add Administrator and whatever group you have setup this folder for. Give them appropriate rights - read/write/modify...