i've turned on "password protected sharing" in vista ultimate to enable password protected on certain shares. is it possible to let the printer and the public folder be shared thru the guest user (no login required), WHILE having other shares be password protected?i can also ask the question the other way around. i could disable password protected sharing in the network config applet to have my public folders work normally BUT at the same time i one specific share to require credentials.ANY WAY to accomplish this? it seems to me that if i cant this is a step back from XP networking, which i find hard to believe.thanks in advance -- Eddie B

Hi Eddie, Thank you for the post. Please understand that Password Protected Sharing is a security enhancement feature introduced on Windows Vista, which forces users to have password to connect to a share remotely. This means that we cannot access the share folder with guest account (without password) when the Password Protected Sharing is turned on. In addition, there is a slight difference between the way forced guest mode (in Windows XP) works and the way turning off password protected sharing works. In Windows XP, forced guest mode automatically forces any user on the network to connect as guest remotely. Thus all users are treated exactly the same way remotely because they cannot be differentiated. Additionally, administrators cannot connect to the hidden $ shares because they cannot authenticate, and if a folder is shared to a specific user he cannot access it. Unlike forced guest mode, turning password protection off in Windows Vista still allows a user to authenticate with credentials before it authenticates the user as guest. This means that if a folder is shared to a specific user or to users with different permissions, each user can connect and be allowed different permissions on the folder. In this case, please refer to the following two methods to address your requirement: Method 1: Add the public folder and printer for every user by using Group Policy. For example, we can map network drive by using logon script net use Z: \\<computer name of Windows Vista>\Public /user:aa <password of aa>. Method 2: Turn off Password Protected Sharing, and deny read permission to everyone. In this way, everyone can access the Public folder and printer with Guest but cannot access specific share. Hope it helps. Sincerely, Joson Zhou Microsoft Online Community Support