You're a platform agnostic type of person. Maybe even just part of a family that swings several ways. Regardless, somehow you've ended up with a few different computers on your home network, all of them running different operating systems.
While they're on the network and can access the internet fine, getting them to share files amongst each other is more complicated than dancing the Macarena in a hurricane, and you often feel just as wounded and confused afterwards. Let's see if we can get things untangled.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we're going to assume that all your machines are already networked correctly, as that topic in itself is more vast than the scope of this article can allow. For operating system versions, we have used Windows XP Professional SP2 (using the Classic Control Panel and Start Menu), Vista Home Premium SP1 (using the Classic Control Panel) and OS X 10.5.2. Procedures may vary on other versions of the operating systems.
Please note that this tutorial considers all firewalls and VPNs are turned off — if you're running one, clearing permissions there is your responsibility. On with the show!
Let's start with the grand daddy of the bunch.
While it's not necessary, it's helpful if all the computers on the network are in the one workgroup. Go to Start > Control Panel > System, and navigate to the Computer Name tab. Click the Change... button. In the computer name field, to keep things easy, we're going to call it XP. In the workgroup field, enter an appropriate name. We're going to go with just the simple Network. Click OK, and a message will appear welcoming you to the new group. Click OK, and then Yes to restart.
Setting the Computer name and Workgroup.
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Once back into Windows, we'll continue with our configuring. An interesting situation — Windows XP doesn't like sharing if you've set a blank Administrator password (or indeed, if your own user password is left blank). Regardless of which account you're using, if you've left the password empty you'll want to set one by going to Start > Control Panel > User Accounts. Click on the appropriate account, select Create a Password and follow the prompts.
Of course there is a way to bypass the password requirement, but it's not exactly a good idea to do so!
If you plan to log into your XP machine's file shares, you'll need to set a password for your accounts.
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At this point we could potentially use Simple File Sharing and make things quick and easy, however it's certainly not the most flexible or secure of methods — so let's do things properly.
Next we're going to turn off Administrative shares; these are secret shares created when you first install XP, and while they can be useful, they can also be a risk. While you shouldn't be handing out administrative passwords to people, if they are given out and the user knows about administrative shares, they can happily browse your hard drive unimpeded. If you're running Windows XP Home, these don't exist and you can go to the next step.
Open up Windows Explorer (usually found in Start > Programs > Accessories), then right click on your hard drive and select Sharing and security. If you selected the C: drive, you'll notice the Share name is set to C$ — the dollar sign at the end means that it's invisible when browsing the network from other computers — however, it can still be accessed manually through Windows Explorer. Since it's the default name included with all XP Professional installations, it's a risk, so we want to turn it off. But if we turn it off here, it'll be recreated the next time we reboot, so we'll need to be a little more clever.
Administrative shares are hidden and make the whole hard drive available to administrators remotely — you might want to disable them.
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Hit the Start button, then select Run, and type regedit in the field. Hit the Enter key, and the Registry Editor will load.
Expand the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder in the tree view on the left, and then under that browse to SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters.
In the viewpane of the right-hand side, right click where there is no text, select New > DWORD Value, and type AutoShareWks and hit the Enter key. It's by default set to 0, which means it's off.
Note that if you're running a server version of XP, the key name will need to be changed to AutoShareServer instead. Close down the Registry Editor, and restart your machine.
Killing Administrative shares for good. (Credit: CBS Interactive)
First we want to create a special user to access any shared files and folders. So return to your User Accounts Control Panel, and click Create a new account. For the sake of this article, we'll call it share. Click Next, make it a Limited account and click the Create Account button. Click on the created share account, select Create a password, and enter something accordingly. We're going to be boring for the sake of the article and use the password share, but you'll want to choose something more secure.
Setting up the limited share account.
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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 section. If you're using the Welcome screen however, you might want to hide the share user from the log-on screen to keep things neat — after all, it should never have to log in locally.
Let's banish the share user from the Welcome screen.
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Once again we'll need to visit the Registry Editor for this piece of magic, so click the Start button, click on Run, type regedit and hit the Enter key.
Once there browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList, right click in an empty portion of the right-hand pane and select New and then DWORD 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 Control Panel > User Accounts page — you'll need to access it from Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, the go to Local Users and Groups and finally the Users section to administer it, or remove the registry key you just created.
Next we're going to turn off Simple File Sharing, to access finer security and sharing options.
First you'll need to open Windows Explorer (usually found under Start > Programs > Accessories). Once loaded click on the Tools menu, select Options, then click on the View tab. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list, deselect Use simple file sharing (Recommended), and click OK.
Disabling simple file sharing.
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Now we're going to share a folder. While you can use an existing one, for the sake of this tutorial we're going to create a new folder called share in the root directory of the hard drive (usually C:\).
Right click on the share folder, and select Sharing and security. Click the Share this folder radio button, and give it an appropriate share name.
Sharing the share folder.
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Click the Permissions button, select the Everyone entry and click the Remove button — this ensures that any other accounts local to the machine will not be able to access the folder remotely. Now we're going to allow the share user you created earlier to read and write to the share folder.
Click the Add button, then click the Advanced button. Click the Find Now button, then select the share user from the list and click OK. Click OK once more, then make sure the share user is selected above and click the
Selecting the share user for permissions.
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Click the Security tab next to the Sharing tab. Click the Add button, then the Advanced button, then the Find Now button, select the share user and click OK. Click OK again, make sure share is selected in the user list, and then set what permissions you want the user to have below. Click OK when you're done, and the share should not only be visible on the network, but fully open to the share user once logged in.
Giving the share user total control of the folder.
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XP 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 Vista or Mac share from XP, please proceed to Connecting to the machines. To set up a Mac or Vista machine for file sharing, read on!
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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!
We ran into a few problems trying to access our Mac reliably from our Windows machines at first — documented below is how we did it.
Make sure the firewall is set to Allow all incoming connections by going to the Apple symbol in the top left, then System Preferences, Security, Firewall.
Allowing incoming connections.
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Next, we need to get the Mac on the same workgroup as the Windows machines. Return to System Preferences, and under Internet & Network, click the Network icon. Select the active network connection (it'll have a green ball next to it and the word "Connected" underneath) and click the Advanced button. Go to the WINS tab, and in the Workgroup field enter network. Click OK, and then Apply.
Set the workgroup to the same as the Windows computers.
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Note that some users have issues with this setting sticking — if this is the case for you, there seems to be a generally accepted work-around. On the Network panel (accessible from System Preferences), at the top it will say Location: Automatic. Click the drop-down box and choose Edit Locations, select Automatic, hit the gear icon and select Duplicate Location. Rename the duplicate, and hit done. Click the drop-down box again and choose the new location — all your networking settings will switch over. Follow the settings above to set the workgroup again — this time it should stick.
Now we need to create an account to access the Mac externally. While OS X 10.5 adds the concept of "Sharing users" — technically they're entirely for the purpose of file sharing — we found our Windows machine could never connect to these accounts. So we'll need to create a regular user instead.
In the System Preferences panel, click Accounts. On the next screen you may need to click the lock icon to be able to proceed further. Click the plus button near the bottom left of the window, and create a user with the name/short name of share, with an appropriate password. For the sake of this article, just like the Windows machines, we've set the password to share, but you'll want to choose something more secure. When done, click the Create Account button.
Creating the share user.
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Click the back button to return to System Preferences. Under Internet & Network click the Sharing icon. First, change the Computer Name to something short and easy, like Mac, without the quotes.
Check File Sharing from the list on the left, then under the Shared Folders section, click the plus symbol, select the folders you wish to share, and click the Add button when you've found one.
Now we want to create permissions for each folder you've shared. Select the folder from the Shared folders list that you want to set permissions for, and set the Everyone account to No Access by clicking on the up and down arrows next to it. You may wish to remove the Users account from the permissions as well by selecting it and pressing the - symbol under the user list section.
Now we'll add the share user to the access list for that folder. Click the + button under the user list, select share and hit the Select button. Depending on what permissions you want to grant to that folder, click the up and down button next to the user name and select either Read, Read & Write or Write Only (Drop Box). Note that there's a share's Public Folder auto-listed in the Shared Folders list — inside is a folder called Drop Box which is set to Write Only. This means that no one can open it, but they can copy files into it.
File sharing on OS X is a little different to Windows — if you set Read & Write as the permissions for a folder, that's all you can do. You can't modify, delete or rename a file remotely unless it exists under that user's folder.
The single panel used for folder sharing and permissions. You can also set these by CTRL + clicking a folder and choosing Get Info.
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Click Options, then select Share files and folders using SMB. You'll need to check the box next to the user you want to share via SMB below, and enter your password to be able to truly enable it (in this case, we'll check the share user). It is highly recommended that you leave the administrator account disabled for SMB, because if a Windows user logs in as that administrator they will have full read access to your hard drive.
Turning on SMB support for the share user, so Windows can access the Mac.
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OS X 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 Vista or XP share from OS X, please proceed to Connecting to the machines.
While using your machine names (XP, Vista, Mac in this case) to connect to your machines is a safer bet (they never change, unlike an IP address if you've set up your router to use DHCP), sometimes a computer simply will not connect without an IP. If you have frequent problems resolving machine names but not IPs, you may want to consider switching your network over to static IPs.
If you're fairly savvy in Windows, discovering your IP address is easy enough. Open up a command prompt and type ipconfig, and amongst the mess of information that comes up will be your IP Address.
For everyone else, to find your IP in XP, go to Start > Settings > Network Connections, double click the appropriate connection and hit the Support tab.
To find your IP in Vista, click the Windows button, click Control Panel, click Network and Sharing Center, then hit the View status link of the appropriate connection, and click the Details button.
To find the IP your Mac is using, go to the Apple icon in the top left, click System Preferences and click on the Network icon. Select the relevant network device, and your IP will be listed.
The details panel in Vista shows your IP, among other information.
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You will then be prompted for a username and password. In our case, we're going to enter share and share, and we should then have access to the shared folders on the computer we're accessing.
When connecting to the Mac however, things are a little different. When it prompts you for a username and password, you'll need to prefix the username with the IP of the Mac. For example:
Username: 192.168.1.17\share
Password: share
smb://[machine name]
Replacing [machine name], with your windows machine name (or potentially IP address if that fails). In the case of the XP share, you'd type:
smb://xp
Click the Connect button. If it fails, you may need to replace [machine name] with the IP of the machine you're trying to connect to, so it would look something like this:
smb://192.168.1.16
If successful, a pop up should appear. Make sure Registered User is checked, then under name enter share, and the appropriate password, then hit Connect.
OS X will then ask you to mount the network share, simply press OK. It should now be viewable under the Shared section on the left-hand side in Finder, or through the Network browser (Shift+Apple+K in Finder).
If all is well and there's no network voodoo that's gotten in the way (and it can happen — why not hit our forums if you get stuck — a user might know the answer!), you should now be able to access file shares on all three machines. You may want to map network folders to a drive in Windows (just right click in Windows Explorer, select Map network drive and follow the steps), or drag share to the desktop in OS X for quick and easy access.
Or you could invest in a Network Addressed Storage unit (NAS), make it a central share point and skip all of the complexities together — but then, that'd be almost too easy.
