Win 7 how to access a shared folder with restricted access

Question

I have seen many answers to various flavours of this question but no one gives a clear answer to a clear question. I would ask that any answer not generalize. Thanks!

A 3 computer, peer to peer, WORKGROUP network all connected through a gigabit switch to each other and from the switch to a 10/100 router and then to the cable modem and the net. One computer acts as a server of sorts as well as its regular day job. Each computer has, for the sake of discussion, a single user who is an administrator. Some user accounts may =have been setup as Standard users originally and later upgraded to admin. No HOMEGROUP is used.

I wish to share some folders on the pseudo-server, some read/write for everyone. A couple restricted to specific users.

the read/write to all folders are not an issue.

Now the fun part.

How the &%&% does one 'login' with a userid and pswd to the restricted folders? I get it that one must map the folder but beyond that, I have tried to offer some 'credentials' but it will have none of it.

Let's say Fred wishes to access the folder on Martha's computer. As instructed in various places, I've created a local account 'Fred' on Martha's machine.

Various things I've read suggest that the credentials that are needed are simply the user name 'Fred' and whatever pswd that was placed on the account on Martha's computer.

What am I doing wrong?

Do I need to add a '\\' somewhere??? Do I need to restrain myself from cursing and offering up hand gesture towards Redmond for a week? what??

Answer 1

use the command "Net" that comes natively with windows. For this situation you could write something like this:

net use  \\MarthasComputerIP\ShareDir /user Fred password

that its going to use the Fred credentials to access martha's shares resources. If that accound doesn't exist in Martha's computer then it doesn't going to work. When you create a share you could specify users and privileges. For example, in my home network, (4 pc's) the "server" has an special account only for shared purpose. That account has specific permissions to the resource that i wan't to share. And this permissions comes in two flavors. The normal and the share permission. You need to stablish coherent permission for this two things. Then any other computer in the network could use the credentials of this special configured account to access the resource.

If you don't specify users at the moment of the share's creation then the default "Everyone" user is used. The meaning of this is that everyone that has a valid credentials to access Martha's computer could access the shares.

To create a share specifying a user and permission you could use this command:

net share c:\pathToShareDir /Grant:SpecialAccountForSharesPurpose,read

To more info about this commands use:

net help use
net help share

To set permissions to folders you could use ICACLS. For other shares like printers you need other specialized tools like subinacl.