XP Tips 'n' Tricks. Troubleshooting Windows XP. XP Professional File Sharing. Windows XP Professional File Sharing One of the handy features of Windows XP (and Windows 2000, for that matter) compared to earlier Windows versions like 95/98/Me is its support for user-level security, which gives you fine control over who can access what information on a system.
In this article, we'll show you how to set up your Windows XP Professional computer so you can share files and folders with other Windows computers on a network, while making sure that only desired users have access. In Windows 95/98/Me, you share data by assigning a password to a shared folder, and anyone that knows the password can gain access to the data. That may be adequate in a small home network where, for example, Mom and Dad know the password to the family's financial data, but Junior doesn't. But it isn't practical in a networks with lots of potential users, since it's hard to keep a password secret amongst a large group of people.