File sharing between XP, Vista and OS X on a local network

Windows Vista SP1

First we need to get Vista on the same workgroup as our XP and OS X machines. To do so, go to the Windows button, Control Panel, and click System. Scroll down to the Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings section and click the Change link.

Click the Change settings link to set up the machine name and workgroup.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Enter an appropriate description for your computer (we've chosen Vista), then click the Change button, and enter the Workgroup name you'll be using across all machines (like the XP machine, we're using Network). You'll also want to choose the PC name here — we've chosen Vista as well to keep things easy. Click OK, and you'll be welcomed to the new group. Click OK again, then one more time and click the Close button. You'll be prompted to restart your computer, so do so.

Turning off Administrative Shares

You can read all about Administrative shares and why we're going to turn them off in the XP section of this tutorial — here's how to turn them off in Vista.

Hit the Windows button, type regedit in the search field and hit the Enter key. The Registry Editor will now load — browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters.

In the viewpane of the right-hand side, right click where there is no text, select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value, type AutoShareWrks and hit the Enter key. It's by default set to 0, which means it's off. Close down the Registry Editor, and restart your machine.

Create a share user

When Windows restarts, we'll want to set up a share user. Click the Windows button, then Control Panel, and select User Accounts, then click the Manage another account link, then the Create a new account link. Call the user share and set the account to be a Standard user. Finally, click Create Account.

Creating the new share user.
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Click on the new profile you're presented with, and then click "Create a password". If you've previously created a user in XP, you might want to use the same password to make things easy (in this case, we're using share, although you'll definitely want to set something more secure yourself). Enter the password of your choice, then click the Create Password button.

Hide the share user from the Welcome screen

Just like XP, if you're using the classic CTRL+ALT+DEL log-on screen, then this isn't needed and you can go on to the next step. If you are using the Welcome screen however, you might want to hide the share user in order to keep things tidy.

We'll need the Registry Editor for this piece of magic, so click the Windows button, type regedit in the search box and hit the Enter key.

Once the Registry editor loads, you'll want to browse to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon folder. Right click on the Winlogon folder, choose New and then Key. Enter SpecialAccounts, and hit the Enter key. Right click on SpecialAccounts, choose New and then Key, and enter UserList, and hit the Enter key.

Select UserList on the left, then right click in an empty portion of the right-hand pane and select New and then DWORD (32-bit) Value. Enter the name of the user you don't want to turn up on the log-on screen (in this case, share), close the Registry Editor and then logout. The extra user should now be gone from the list. Note that this will also hide the share user from the User Accounts Control Panel, so you'll need to delete the username key from the registry you just entered, or double click on it and set Value data to 1.

Sharing a folder

For this example, we'll be creating a new folder, although it's just as easy to apply sharing to an existing one.

First step is to turn off the Sharing wizard — open Windows Explorer (just hit the Windows button and type "explorer" into the search panel and it should come up), open the Tools menu and click Folder Options. Switch to the View tab, scroll to the bottom of the list, then deselect Use Sharing Wizard (Recommended).

Although the Sharing Wizard makes file sharing easy, it doesn't give a great amount of granularity over user permissions.
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Just like in our Windows XP example, for the sake of the tutorial we've created a folder called share in the C:\ drive. Right click on it, then click the Advanced Sharing button.

Check the Share this folder checkbox, set an appropriate Share name, then click the Permissions button. Remove the Everyone account by selecting it and clicking the Remove button, then click Add. Click the Advanced button and then Find Now, and select the share user and click OK, then OK again. Change the permission checkboxes to what you would like, then hit OK and OK again.

Turning on the sharing for the folder.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)

At this stage the share user has read/write permissions, but if you want things a little more under your control, you'll need to hit the Security tab. Click the Edit button, Add button, then the Advanced button and the Find Now button, and finally select the share user and hit OK, then OK again. Set your access permissions accordingly by checking the appropriate checkboxes, then click OK and finally Close.

Setting more granular permissions for the share user on the share folder.

Finished with Vista

Vista should now be set up for sharing. Feel free to add any other folders using the relevant steps above. To find out how to connect to a Mac or XP share from Vista, please proceed to Connecting to the machines. To set up a Mac for file sharing, read on!