Tip #3599 - Vista File and Print Sharing
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Vista
File and Print Sharing
In this article, I
will show you how users can set up some share points of their own in the
new Windows Vista operating system. In almost every office, it eventually
becomes necessary for users to collaborate on documents. In the past,
this has often meant that the administrator has to set up a special location
for the shared documents and create a special security group made up of
the users who will need access to them. In Windows Vista though, it is
possible for users to set up some share points of their own, but in a
controlled manner that is unlikely to cause administrative headaches.
Allow me to show you how it works.
Although I’ve
always liked Windows XP on the whole, I’ve always found it to be
a bit lacking in collaboration features. For example, what happens when
a group of users in your company need to collaborate on a document? Assuming
you haven’t set up a special shared folder on a file server and
you don’t have a SharePoint portal set up, the users probably just
end up e-mailing the document back and forth. Windows XP does allow you
to share folders with other users, but doing so usually opens a can of
worms, so most administrators prevent users from creating file shares
on their computers.
In Windows Vista though,
the entire file and print sharing mechanism has been completely redesigned
and in a way that allows users to collaborate on projects, while still
allowing administrators to preserve at least some degree of security.
In order to appreciate the ways that file sharing works in Windows Vista,
you need to understand a little bit about the way user files are stored
in Windows XP. Most of you probably already know all about user folders
in Windows XP, but I want to briefly discuss them for the benefit of anyone
who might not have much Windows XP administration experience.
Windows XP is designed
to support multiple users. Any time a user logs into a computer that’s
running Windows XP, Windows does a quick check to see if that user has
logged in before. If the user has never logged into the machine, Windows
then creates a profile for that user and puts it directly on the local
hard drive (assuming folder redirection isn’t being used). By default,
user profiles are stored in the C:\Documents and Settings
folder. Windows creates a separate folder for each user, with the folder
bearing the user’s name. If the user is logging in via a domain
account, the folder’s name is made up of the user’s name,
a period and the domain name. You can see an example of this folder structure
in the picture below.
The user’s profile folder’s job is to store all of the user’s
documents and settings related to the user’s account (Internet Explorer
favorites, etc). You can see the contents of a typical user profile folder
in the given picture below.
Like Windows XP, Windows
Vista is also designed to support multiple users. As such, Vista uses
a user profile folder structure that is similar to the one used within
Windows XP. There are a few differences that you will notice right off
the bat though. For example, the Documents and Settings folder has been
renamed to Users. The naming convention for the individual profile folders
remains the same, but the structure of the profile itself has changed
to reflect Vista’s ability to better index various file types. The
picture below shows what a Vista profile folder looks like in comparison
to the Windows XP version, which was shown above.
What I really want
to show you though is the contents of the Users folder, shown in the picture
below. Notice any differences from the first picture? Both Windows XP
and Windows Vista have folders for each user profile. However, Vista also
includes a Public folder.
The Public folder
is designed specifically for file sharing. If a user needs to share a
document with others in the organization, they can place that document
into the Public folder on their machine. That way, users can collaborate
on documents without having to actually create shares on their workstations.
Earlier, I mentioned
that the new file and print sharing mechanism doesn’t completely
throw security out the window. The truth is that the administrator always
has control over whether sharing is allowed or not. If you do decide to
allow sharing though, you are somewhat at the mercy of the user, as far
as security is concerned.
To understand what
I am talking about, you will need to see the dialogue box that allows
file and print sharing to be configured. Windows Vista is still in beta
testing, so anything can change. For now though, you can access the file
and print sharing settings by opening the Control Panel and
clicking on the Network and Internet link, followed by
the File and Print Sharing link. When you do, you will
see the dialogue box that’s shown in the picture below.
The dialogue box shown
above allows you to control the behavior of file and print sharing for
the machine. On a larger scale, you would probably want to control these
settings via a group policy, but I wanted to show you this box just so
you could get a better feel for how the process works.
The first thing you
will probably notice in the dialogue box is that it allows you to share
your printer. Printer sharing works pretty much the same way that it did
in Windows XP, so I don’t want to waste too much time talking about
that. Vista’s file sharing capabilities are much more interesting.
I don’t have
any documentation on Vista yet, but from what I have been able to observe,
users are allowed to share any folder that they have rights to. However,
the only folder that the users have full control over, by default, is
their profile folder. This means that a user could share their profile
folder or a subfolder within the profile folder using basically the same
method they used in Windows XP.
As an administrator
though, I don’t really like the idea of users sharing some or all
of their profile folders. A responsible user may only share a folder containing
documents for collaboration, but it is just too easy for a user to share
the whole thing. As I already mentioned, a profile folder contains user
specific configuration data, which tends to be very sensitive. That being
the case, you have the option of either allowing or disallowing users
to share their profile folders. Notice in the earlier picture that the
Don’t Allow People Using This Computer to Share out Their
User Account Folder option is selected by default.
So, what about the
Public folder that I mentioned earlier? Well, if you take a look at the
above picture, you will notice that just below the option to share printers,
there is a checkbox that you can enable if you want to share the contents
of the machine’s Public folder. Just beneath this checkbox are two
radio buttons that you can use to control network access rights to the
folder. This then brings up an interesting point about the Public folder.
The rights that you apply here apply throughout the Public folder by default.
Users can however, create subfolders beneath the Public folder and set
network access rights to those folders individually.
The last thing I want
to point out is the two links at the bottom of the File and Printer Sharing
dialogue box. These links allow you to see, at a glance, which files on
the machine are being shared and what shares exist on the machine. I love
this feature, because it takes the guess work out of working with network
shares.
As you can see, file
and print sharing works quite a bit differently in Windows Vista than
it did in Windows XP. The Public folder feature now gives users a central
place for sharing documents without having to involve an administrator.
Check it out!
~ Ramachandran Kumaraswami
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