Enabling sharing on Windows 2000/XP

Enabling sharing on Windows 2000/XP
In Windows 2000/XP, sharing is enabled by default on each network connection
on your machine. If you have a wired network card and a wireless card,
you can have sharing enabled On on one card and Off on the other. This is
very helpful if you only want to share files on one of the networks that you
connect to. For example, if you want to share files when connected to your
home wireless network but turn off sharing when you plug your laptop in at
work, turn sharing On for your wireless card and Off for your wired Ethernet
card. When you first install a new network card, or wireless network card for
our purposes, the default is to have sharing turned On.
To enable sharing on a Windows 2000/XP machine, follow these steps, which
are quite similar to those in the preceding section:
1. Choose Start➪Settings➪Network and Dial-up Connections.
2. Right-click the icon of the network connection over which you wish to
enable File and Printer Sharing and then choose Properties from the
pop-up menu that appears.
3. On the General tab for network cards and on the Network tab for
dialup connections, you select the check box for File and Printer
Sharing for Microsoft Networks.
This enables your PC to share files and also printers.
Use Windows Explorer to find and move shared files.
When you right-click any folder or file and then select Sharing from the
pop-up menu that appears, you can control the sharing of that file.