network sharing

[rh71]

I share all my partitions on machine1 at home. Machine2 is a work-issued laptop on the same LAN. I can access all the files from machine1 via machine2 - all is fine up to this point.

But whenever I log into work (VPN) with machine2, it appears as if everyone at work can see my machine1 shares also.

How can I at least password protect my shares on machine1 in XP ? I want only machine2 to have access to them.

The reason I think they can see my shares is because when I go to Network Neighborhood --> Entire Network, I can see everyone else's shares appear in the list (but I can't seem to access them).

I just want to ensure nobody can get to mine either. It'd be even better if they don't see me in there in my own workgroup.

Thx.

[meese]

Is your work network a workgroup or domain? Is your home network a workgroup or domain?

[rh71]

Work network is a domain. Home network is a workgroup, but I log in using my work domain password (probably login as cached since I can't VPN in before I WIN2k login).

What I've done now is disable the Computer Browser service but that also is disallowing machine2 from browsing thru work machines thru Entire Network...

Again, I essentially want machine1 shares to be available only to machine2 on my LAN, but machine2 can see work shares and machine1 LAN shares.

[meese]

Is your home worgroup name the same as your work domain?

[rh71]

no, not at all.

[meese]

Do you use different user names and passwords on your home pc and laptop?

Although people from work may see the shares from your home pc, they won't be able to access those shares unless they know the username and password of the local pc account.

For better security you can change the share permissions from Everyone to Administrator. Or instead of sharing folders get familiar with using hidden shares. If you are the admin then you can access folders by typing the path in the windows explorer address bar:

//workstation2/C$

The command above will let you access all the files and folders of the c drive on workstation2.

With hidden shares you won't have a list of shares visible to people at work, even though they cannot open the shares.

And another thing you could do is change the permissions of machine1's C: partition (or whatever partition you have) from Everyone to Administrator. This will cause all the files and folders to have the same permissions in that partition.

(That is if you are using either XP or W2K and NTFS file system)