Page 3 - Permission Problems Between XP Pro and Home

Originally Posted by Nilpo

I was asked a very good question so I decided to post the solution here. People frequently have problems when filesharing between XP Home and XP Pro. You may recieve errors like the following:

"Error: \\pc name is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource...Access is denied."

or

"You might not have permission to use the network resource. Contact the administrator of the server to find out if you have access permission."

These types of errors are due to NTFS restrictions in effect on the target machine. Windows XP Pro has much more advanced permission controls than XP Home.

Or does it?

Try logging onto your XP Home machine in Safe Mode. When you view a file or folder's properties you'll notice the elusive Security Tab presumed to be missing from the Home Edition. In fact, it's not missing, but rather hidden in normal mode. This simple procedure will allow you to install it in normal mode so that you can make better use of NTFS permissions, and eliminate the errors shown above.

1. Download the Windows NT Server Security Configuration Manager from the Microsoft Website.
2. Run the downloaded scesp4i.exe to extract the contents.
3. Open the folder that you extracted the files into and right-click the file named setup.inf and choose Install.
4. Choose no, if asked to overwrite essent.dll
5. Restart you computer.

Congratulations, you've just returned the Security Tab to your file and folder properties.

Still want more? Okay. How about adding XP Pro's Group Policy Editor functionality to the Home edition? Try the freeware, Windows XP Security Console by Doug Knox.