Windows 7: Sharing folders with certain users only?

Is it possible to share a folder with a certain user on another computer, like if I only wanted the user bob to have access to the shared folder and not everyone? Or maybe just a certain computer to have access to the shared folder?



Right now I'm sharing drives on my desktop and laptop with everyone with read and write access but I was wondering if there is a more secure way to do this other than selecting everyone when sharing a folder. Just in case somehow a neighbor or someone got access to my network. The way I'm sharing folders right now is to go to the folder properties > advanced sharing > share this folder and then allow permissions to everyone. Thanks.

Sure there is. Create a group with bob as the only user. then make that group the owner of the shared folder. Only Bob will have access. If you want the admin (you) to have access as well add him to the group too.

Ken

So under the permissions in advanced sharing where it lets you add or remove users, how do I add a user from another computer? The only location that shows up is the computer that I'm currently on, so when I put in the username and check names it doesn't find that user because it is looking for it on the current computer. I tried to put in the network name and then the username (CPUNAME\username) but that did not work either. Thanks for the quick response.

Create the user "bob" on your computer and give him the same password as on the other computer.

So are you saying that to share a folder exclusively with a user on another computer there has to be the same username on both computers?

You can either do that, or you can create a generic user and the person using the other computer would connect to your shared folder using it.

Seems like they should have a more straightforward way of doing this, oh well guess I'll just stick to sharing with everyone for now. Thanks for the info..

I tried renaming the usernames on both comps to be the same but that still did not work, thought it might of worked at first but it was because everyone was added by default. It doesn't really make sense to be able to share a folder on a computer with another user on the same computer because most likely they already have access to it anyway. There has to be a better way of sharing folders to specific users on the same network who are not using the same computer..

There are a couple ways to do this, you can supposidly do this by using your Windows live messenger name to share with only that user. The tutorial below shows you how. Let me know if it works because I havn't had a chance to try this yet and it appears to be experimental at this stage.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/0...s-in-homegroup

The other method is in the link below but it's a royal pita in my opinion, but it's the correct way to do this. Using live messenger account names seems much easier to me.
Windows 7 to Windows XP Permissions Help