I'm running a server with XP Pro and a laptop with XP home on a wireless network. I've had the server set up with simple file sharing for a few years sharing my e: drive which contains all of my documents and music files. I access them mostly over the network on my laptop. The other day I decided to try switching to advanced file sharing, wanting to have a more secure username/password type login. I disabled simple file sharing and, to start out, added the "everyone" group with "full control" permissions. I am unable to set the "Permissions" in the sharing tab of the drives properties however with the message "This has been shared for administrative purposes. The permissions cannot be set." My account has administrative properties so I'm confused as to that message. After applying these options to my shared volume I am no longer able to execute files from any account local or otherwise. I can browse them without issue but can't open any music files. After trying in vain to fix the problem I finally decided just to go back to simple sharing. Now I still cannot access my files though. Its acting as though I have only read only rights since I can't move files now. I tried as a last ditch effort using system restore to fix it but that has left my bogus file permissions unfortunately very intact. Can anyone help me with this? I tried copying the files to another drive (I have 3) but I cannot even copy them. I've tried logging in as administrator, is there another account I should be using or what? I need a way to recover these files.

The message "This has been shared for Administrative purposes. The permissions cannot be set" is coming up because you are attempting to modify permissions on the default share for the drive. You will need to create a new share and then you will be able to set the permissions on that. Follow the steps below (the steps assume that Simple file sharing is disabled): 1. From the Windows XP Professional computer right click on the E: drive and choose Sharing and Security. 2. Click on the "New Share" button near the bottom of the screen which will bring up the New Share Dialog Box. Type of name for the share, such as E Drive or Music_Docs 3. Click on the Permissions button and set the appropriate permissions. 4. Click the OK button twice and your new share should show up. Click the OK button once more to close out of the drive properties. Now you can test it out by trying to connect to the share from your Windows XP Home computer. Simply type in \\<computer name> where the computer name is the name of the Windows XP Professional computer.

Hey, worked like a charm. Thanks alot, this board has fixed quite a few of my (mis)adventures in computing. Thanks again ^_^

OK, thought it worked like a charm. The one file I tested to make sure it worked was the only one that worked. It has to be some kind of permission problem on "My Music" because I checked to make sure the files weren't corrupted since Media Player reacts the same way it would if they were. I booted my linux distro and was able to see and execute numerous files from there. I'll keep fumbling around with this one.