Windows 2000 Important note: By default, Windows 2000 installs a hidden share for EVERY drive. This means that every file on your 2000 computer can potentially be accessed from the network or the Internet. Since 2000 was designed to be used in a business network environment, these shares were intended to allow a network administrator to access important files remotely. Only members of the Administrators group on your computer can access these shares. Of course, the user created during the Windows 2000 install is a member of the Administrators group...

You are using a password when you login to Windows, aren't you?

You did set a password for the Administrator account, didn't you?

Otherwise, someone using easily available software can scan your Windows 2000 computer from the Internet, and access any file on your computer simply by entering the username: administrator and a blank password. Yikes!!

Best practice in this case is to login as administrator, go to control panel/users and passwords and add a password for all accounts. For good measure, change the username of the administrator account to something else as well, like 'Bob.'

Next, open 'My Computer' and browse to the drive or folder that you wish to share. (Note: you may only share drives or folders/directories, not individual files. There's nothing to stop you creating a new directory for a single file and sharing that out though.) Right click the drive or folder and select 'sharing.' Select the 'shared this folder' option

Enter the share name you would like. (This how the shared resource will be named when viewed from another computer.) You can set the number of users who are allowed to access the shared resource at the same time, if you wish. By using the 'permissions' button, you can select groups or individual users who can access the shared resource. The read-only permission grants the right to read or copy data without being able to change or delete it, the change permission allows a user to do anything except delete the entire share (he or she can still delete files or folders inside the share) or change the permissions on the share. Full control is full control.

Click 'ok' when finished.