Enabling Full Access to Children's Computer

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Our child has a WinXP Pro SP3 notebook computer in her bedroom. We want to fully access the notebook from another computer on our home network.

I’ve shared the C: drive, mapped a drive to it on our Win 7 computer, but get “Access denied” when I attempt to access Documents and Settings and the User accounts.

How do we configure the WinXP notebook to access it w/ full control from other computers on our home network?

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To make things work with best with XP you need the same account and password on the target (child) machine as used on the source (your) machine.

Also, see Troubleshooting file shares on a home network for detailed information.

Joe

--Joe

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Thank for the reply, Joe.

The workstations can see each other when pinging the IP fine and I can access & see the contents of the C: drive after I’ve mapped a drive from my machine to child’s machine. I can then click on “C:Documents and Settings” to see the Users, then click on the child’s account directory, encounter “Access denied”.

The child’s account a my account are both Computer Admin accounts. Even if I try to enable security settings from Properties on the child’s machine, I still encounter “Access denied”.

My networking experience has been only logical drive mapping on business servers & workstations to access shares, directories, programs, files, etc. and then as it only relates to our business software, but this personal home networking project is escaping me.

Is anyone aware of a guide detailing the setup for a private home computer to access & have full control of another home computer on the same home network?

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Your account needs to exist on the child’s PC. Does it?

Joe

--Joe

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My account does exist on the child’s PC.

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Depending on what you want to accomplish – have you considered a remote desktop connection?

It would give you access to see what’s installed etc – though not at the same time that the laptop is being used.

Just a thought.

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Some more thoughts (they come to me slowly these days In your situation I’d try some of these:

– Confirm both PCs are in the same workgroup.
Right click ‘My Computer’ –>Properties –> “computer name” tab to check/change

– Try the easy things first. Look at the properties of ‘Shared Folders’ on the childs PC – make sure they’re shared with users on the network, and see if you can access them.

– XP SP3 has ‘simple file sharing’ turned on by default. Try turning it off as described here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304040#turnonfile
That will give you more granular control over individual folders and permissions. If I remember correctly it also allows you look at the properties for a folder and click on a few ‘advanced’ buttons to get to a pop up showing effective permissions for each user (read/change/delete/traverse etc.).

– You may have problems sharing the root of C from the childs PC.
In your situation I’d first delete that share and try a single folder. Perhaps c:testfolder and something within the
‘My documents’ tree.

These are starting points, rather than full explanations. Have a play and see if any of them work, or provide more info.

Try remocing that

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Hi, Malc,

1) All home PCs are in the same XP workgroup, “WORKGROUP”.

2) No problems accessing the Shared Folder, but we’re not using that at all as we are doing more than transferring files – the goal is to access & have full control of the workstation as a mapped network resource, not RDC.

3) I have shared the child’s PC C: root drive & can access & view it OK across the network as a mapped logical drive & subdirectories

4) Turning off Simple File Sharing & enabling non-default Access Level 3, 4 or 5 may work & will try that. But the intention is to only give one of the parents’ workstations access & full control, not to everyone who may access the network.

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Here is how I would do it….

Same user name and password needs to be setup on the child’s computer as your own. Make your user account an administrator account on the child’s machine.

Turn off simple file sharing as recommended above. (From a windows explorer window click tools-folder options and from the view tab scroll clear to the bottom and unclick the simple file sharing option.)

Next go to C:documents and settings and right click on the folder that has the child’s user name. Click on properties and then click the security tab. Add your user to the list, click the Full control box and click apply.

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Directory > ‘Properties’ > ‘Security’ : this is one of the areas I was having trouble entering an object or user.

I haven’t been able to, but shouldn’t I be able to enter “\[parents.computer][parents.user.account.name]” to an explicit Security Advanced setting? Or will those Security settings only work for local resources (as opposed to network resources)?

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In your case with a peer-to-peer network you will need to have your account setup on the child’s computer with matching password to your own computer. You will add the LOCAL account in the security setting on the folder.

You are possibly used to a domain from your work environment. In the domain environment you can add DOMAIN users as well as local users and give them rights on a workstation.

Even though you add the LOCAL user account and give access rights based on it, when you access the share from your machine with a matching account and password, you will be recognized and given the local account’s privileges.

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