Setting up permssions on file shares

[Csorel]

Hi Everyone,

I am new here to the forums and was looking for a little bit of help. Here is my setup. I have a Linksys WRT310N wireless router and I live in my cousins 3 family house. He provides internet to his tennants as part of the rent and I manage the equipment and network. By my count I have 3 personal computers on this network, my cousin as another 2, and they tennants on the 3rd floor has another 2 so a total of 7 units are on the network. I just setup a media center computer with a large amount of storage space on it for storing backup info, movies, music, pictures etc. What I want to do is limit access to the shared folders on it to just my laptop computer and my desktop computer. The media center is running XP MCE, my laptop is running Vista Home Prem, and my desktop is running Vista Ultimate. I have tried doing some research but every where I go I only see stuff about setting up permissions for just users on that box. Nothing about setting up permissions for other units on the network. I need full access read write permissions on the folders so I can store info but I only want my desktop and laptop to be able to make changes I don't want other tennants in the building to be nosing around in the folder shares. Can some help me out or at least point me in the right direction?

[homecomputeraid]

You can put the server and the two computers you want to be able to access it in their own workgroup, and create administrative (hidden) shares on the server.

To create an administrative share, right click on the folder you want to share, and select Properties. On the Sharing tab, click the Share this folder radio button, and make the sharename begin with a $. For example $MyShare.

When you browse the server over the network, the shared folder will not appear. You will have to access it by going to Start, Run, and typing in \\ServerName\$MyShare, replacing ServerName with your actual Server's name, and $MyShare with the actual administrative shared folder name.

There are more sophisticated ways to do restrict access involving creation of separate subnetworks, but those options may require that you buy more hardware.