On 9 Jun 2002, at 7:46, Peter Shkabara wrote:

> David, This is an area where you have more expertise than I do. I think
> that Carlos was wanting a share that did not require user
> authentication. I have sometimes wanted to do this myself: allow the
> world to access a share as read only, for example. Is there an easy way
> (or even a hard way) to do this on a Win2k system that is mixed with
> win9x machines?

  As long as the clients are set to use user-level security and not
share-level security, they should by default be able to access shares
with the permissions granted to "Everyone".

> The "net use" works ok, but the user still needs to be logged in on
> the win9x machine with a name that matches the share on the win2k
> (win9x net command does not support the /u: option).

  I would have sworn that this was how my 98SE box reaches the shares
on the NT Server that serves as my file server, and would even have
guessed that /u: support was a function of whether the 9x system was
set for user-level or share-level security.
  But it turns out that I had made that machine a domain member, and
so even though I use command-line NET USE in batch files on it, I
never need to supply an additional account or password.
  (In fact, it turns out that I still had that box set for share-
level security, so it may be that that setting only makes a
difference on resources shared out from the 9x box.)

  Hmmm...  Although I've been able to mount my shares using the
command-line NET USE, Network Neighborhood on my 98SE machine has
always been giving me an "Unable to browse network" error message
when I try to drill down from "Entire Network", and no machines have
been visible.
  In checking out the various option that might be relevant to this
question, I noticed that the temporary Workgroup Name I had filled in
originally on the Identification tab of the network properties was
still there, even though I long ago added the machine to my domain.
  So I changed that workgroup name to match the domain name, so it
can now find the current browse master, and suddenly (after a reboot)
the machine itself and the other active domain members show up, and I
can drill down to see the visible shares on the file server!

  Well, short answer is that I've achieved this effect by having an
NT domain.  I think it can be done without one, and I even thought I
had, but it turns out I hadn't.  [I have seen NT/2K successfully
access shares without a prompt, without a "real" domain, when the
account name and password on the client matched a valid local pair on
the server, but I don't know if 9x can do that trick.

Dave Gillett

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