Windows XP: Access control via Security

Windows XP Professional offers (in addition to the User Access control in Network Sharing) also the possibility to control access to file via Security:

Security is NOT available on disks drives / partitions, which are formatted in either FAT or FAT32.

On a disk drive / partition formatted in NTFS, you can assign "Security", you also can use other features of
the NTFS system:
- disk / file compressing
- disk Quota

On a disk drive / partition formatted in NTFS, you can assign "Security", you also can use other features of
the NTFS system:
- disk / file compressing
- disk Quota

By default, members of the group Administrators have "Full Control", which includes all permissions.

Members of other groups (like "Users") have only limited access permission:
- they can read and execute files
- they can NOT create / modify / delete files.

Permissions defined for the disk / partition are also valid for all folders on this disk :
the permissions are inherited.

Be aware of the "strength" of the "Deny" possibility: it will override ANY "Allow" permission defined for ANY other group.

Therefore, if you like to give access only to some users, remove the ALL access permissions for the group "Users"

For the disk or the folder, which should only be accessible for some users, select the button "Add..."

to make it easy, click on "Advanced"

Click on "Find Now", then select the User or User Group, for which you are assigning the permission.

This copies the complete username / groupname (include the name of the user database)

This creates for the select user / group the default permissions (read / execute). If required, grant now additional permissions to enable write and modify.

If such a secured folder is inside a shared disk/folder, then the folder will be visible via the network.
On trying to access the secured folder with a Username, for which no security settings were defined, the system will display the "Access is denied" error message.

About Johannes Helmig

Johannes Helmig is the Director of Technical Knowledge Management at Gerber Technology, based in Brussels/Belgium. In this Technical Support position, one part of his responsibilities is to keep the technical personal up-to-date on Operating systems, including Networking. Johannes holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University (RWTH) in Aachen/Germany. Johannes runs WoWN, a website dedicated to Microsoft Windows Networking. www.wown.com

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