Solved Trying to share ONLY one folder

Hello all. I have multiple machines on my home network. They are all mine except one. I've shared C on all of mine because you have to have login credentials to get to the drive to begin with. (I share files frequently between all of them.) What I'd like to do is share ONLY one folder with my wife's laptop. Since my C drive is shared, I can create a profile on my computer for her with login credentials. However, I can't figure out how to give her access to only that one folder. When I log in from her laptop, I can see the folder, along with the rest of my entire C drive. LOL How can I limit access to just one folder? Thanks in advance.

I'm not fully awake right now, I have Windows 7, I believe I can SHARE just one directory of my C or D and somewhere within those boxes I can specify who gets to write to that directory, I can't remember if read can be restricted. I assume you already tried to SHARE just that one directory?

RolandJS said:

I'm not fully awake right now, I have Windows 7, I believe I can SHARE just one directory of my C or D and somewhere within those boxes I can specify who gets to write to that directory, I can't remember if read can be restricted. I assume you already tried to SHARE just that one directory?

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Thanks - yes, I have tried sharing just the one directory. BUT, in order to share a directory, you have to share your drive. If you share your drive, whoever accesses it must have an account on that machine. And if they have an account, they have to have read access to the ENTIRE C drive - or so it would seem at this point. I can control write access easily. It's the read part that I'm having trouble with - or I should say, Windows is having trouble with. From what I can tell, Windows wants everyone to read everything all of the time. lol

I guess I'm just unfamiliar with Windows way of using permissions. On a Linux based system, what I'm trying to do is a simple process. For instance, for years I had a single shared directory on my iMac. Everyone on the network had access to that, and ONLY that. Read & write (not execute). I'm in Linux Mint right now, and could probably arrange this same instance in 5 minutes. I've just never understood Windows permissions. After being away from Windows for 10 years and coming back, it's like learning to walk again.

Windows uses a dual layer security model for network sharing You need to set the network permissions and then set the file access permissions. This can get complex for those who have not a lot of experience with these settings.

The simplest way to get what you want is to use the built in public folders found under the Users folder, (C:\Users\Public... ... ), as long as you have sharing enabled in the network Control Panel (ensure that the share option is set for public folders) then anyone on other windows systems will have full access to the files in the public area.

If you wish to use a more granular control on a folder that already exists, then you need to right click on the folder you wish to share, select Share and decide on the basic share permissions, set them, and return to the folder.

Next ... ...

Right click and select security and find the user called Everyone, or select the add option if not present - Select edit and adjust the file permissions for the folder to give various levels of user the access you require for them.

You can switch off the need for passwords but I always suggest this is left active as it can prevent a virus or other malware from using a network share to access further systems

The set-up on the XP systems of old actually used the same system as this but as the defaults were set so that all users were full administrators and thus had free access to the whole system

Such a simple solution that I overlooked it. Thank you so much for explaining that! I'll just use the public folder option, which is available to everyone - no user profile or login required. I may use the more detailed approach later on some other directories. I'll do a test with the public folder before I mark the thread as solved, just in case I have another question or I do something else wrong. LOL. Thanks again!

One more question - I was able to get exactly what I wanted by using the public folder option. I simply enabled public folders with password requirements. However, she still has access to my entire C drive. (Because the drive is shared.) No problem - I disabled sharing. Now it's set up the way that I want. The only thing that comes up are the public folders......BUT.......

If the drive is not shared, even I, as the administrator, don't have access to the entire drive from another machine. When logging in, it only gave me permissions for the public folders. What I would like to do is give myself access to the entire drive when I log in, but everyone else will get public folder access only. Is there a way that I can achieve that? Thanks again for your help - I got it set up the exact way that I wanted!

Share the whole drive with full access - remove all users except administrators, (and your own username for completeness), from the Share permissions, as a member of the administrators group you already have sufficient File access properties to allow you access to the drives locally - the addition of the share with specific rights allows remote access but anyone not a member of the Administrators will not even see the share.

You could use the Old C$ share that's been around for many years although tis is frowned upon as it opens up two many possible backdoors ( malware knows it exists )

I would actually suggest that you do not use the default drive share name presented but make something up yourself

Thank you! I'll give that a run through tomorrow. You've been a tremendous help.