Allow anonymous access to file share

[Griffyn]

Hi all,

Have a NT4 domain and a Win2003 server that is a member of it. I've set up a file share on it and assigned Everyone read/write rights. But if I use an XP Pro machine (not a member of the domain) to access the file share using Windows Explorer, I get prompted for a username and password, but nothing I put in is accepted.

If I use the Command Prompt, and issue a [tt]NET USE H: \\WIN2K3SRV\FILESHARE[/tt] command, it prompts for the username and password (sometimes) and then responds saying that there are no logon servers available.

How can I set this up? I've had a play in the Local Security Policy settings and allowed anonymous access to file shares. What else do I need to do?

I can't fall back on making the XP Pro machine a member of the domain, because we also have some laptops with XP Home, and they obviously can't do that.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Roadki11]

Ive done this for companies who refuse to spend money and fully integrate workstations with the domain. Create a generic user account in AD and give that user access to the share. Then Create a batch file with your net use command, something like this:

net use Z: \\servername\sharename /user:domain\domainuser userpassword /persistent:no

I then put it in the startup on the workstations. If security of that domain username/password was important i would use a program to compile the bat file into an exe so its not human readable.

Hope this helps,

RoadKi11

 

[Griffyn]

Hi RoadKi11,

Except we don't use Active Directory. We have an NT domain. I can't add user accounts from the NT domain to the file share on the Win2003 server.

I actually managed to get it working without authentication. Not 100% sure, but the last thing I did was to add some entries to the Win2003 server's LMHOSTS file so that it could find our NT4 PDC.