In reply to a post by meditator:

that KB article by Microsoft must be quite old, as one or two of the initial settings described in it simply aren't available in XP any longer.

Which ones? It looks quite reasonable to me altho' I've got Simple File Sharing OFF so I don't see many of them.

Wouldn't bother with Network wizard. You've already set your network up & anything you can do with a wizard you can do manually often easier

Which PC is the printer physically connected to?

Looks like F&PS is required to be enabled on XP. I've just turned it off on both XP & W8.1. The XP can see shared folders on W8.1 but W8.1 can't see shared folders on XP nor its printer.

Success! I've got it working. I'll fill you in on the details tomorrow but essentially I chose (for the experiment) one particular folder on the XP machine, clicked on its Sharing option and then ran the Network wizard. Although the wizard set up the XP's firewall for F&PS it did NOT enable the F&PS setting in the Properties of the Network connection. (All along, I've had this mini-lock showing in the Ethernet Connection icon). So, in the end I had to not only manually enable F&PS but also then go back to the chosen folder and check (enable) its sharing on the network. It was then a matter of going to the Mac and opening Finder (the equivalent of Windows Explorer). Low and behold, the XP machine's name was now sitting there, in the Finder window. Clicking it made it search for any shared folders on the server machine and so the folder in question appeared. This is what I wanted and so I should now be able to copy the folder or any of its files to precisely wherever I wish on the Mac.

The one or two articles I'd found had made a big point of saying never to share a system drive, and by implication any other volume or partition on the server machine, but I've been wondering if I could, as I run several partitions on the main drive and most of the folders I'd want to copy across would be in one particular partition. I wouldn't dare touch the system partition in this regard but can you see any problem in me sharing the whole of one of the other partitions?

So it all boiled down to enabling F&PS on XP and sharing some of its folders, as I orginally recommeded, but you just took the 'high road' .

As BatBoy pointed out XP has a hidden share of C$, thereby reveling the whole of the C: drive. Try entering \\YourXPName\C$ in Mac's Finder.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

As BatBoy pointed out XP has a hidden share of C$, thereby reveling the whole of the C: drive. Try entering \\YourXPName\C$ in Mac's Finder.

I don't know about XP, but on NT that only worked if you were logged in to the remote machine as Administrator� which came in handy at times.

Dunno about NT, but, as I've already said, I can access (R&W) XP's C$ from my Admin user on W8.1.

Aye, the admin user will be in the the administrator group, and the passwords are presumably the same on the computers so credential delegation is taking place

The administrative share behaviour is changed in Windows8+

Edited by Pipexer (Tue 22-Apr-14 00:25:19)

Yeh, I suppose I did take the "high road". What held me back was F&PS and its alleged vulnerability. But the responses from you and others were educational and in the end gave me the confidence to press ahead. That's surely what these forums should be about, shouldn't it? So yes, thanks for your and others' help in this.

In XP, running the Network wizard when you attempt to share a folder and you get the warning I mentioned probably does change some settings in the Windows Registry, as was suggested. However, despite selecting in the wizard for F&PS to be turned on, that didn't happen! I later had to do it manually. On the face of it, all that the wizard appeared to do was to set up the F&PS Exception in the Windows firewall, but again I could have done that manually.

One thing that's still puzzling me is that from the outset there's been a tiny padlock showing in the Local Area Connection icon on the XP machine. After configuring for sharing, etc it's still there. Any idea what that's all about? (Bear in mind that there may well be some significant differences in the way that sharing's implemented/depicted on later machines such as Windows 7 and 8).

One other query I have is that, in XP, if you go into the Local Area Connection properties dialog box where TCP/IP, Client for MS Networks, F&PS for MS Networks, etc show, when you highlight F&PS you see a couple of buttons, Install and Uninstall. These are for services to be added to F&PS and appear to include: Service, Protocol and Client. Which, if any, of these three should I ensure are added, and which sub-services?

In reply to a post by meditator:

there's been a tiny padlock showing in the Local Area Connection icon on the XP machine. After configuring for sharing, etc it's still there. Any idea what that's all about?

Dunno! Never seen a padlock. Do you mean the icon in System Tray (bottom R)?

Idea: In your Network Connections, do you have an Internet Gateway Connected? Does your router have uPnP ON?

In reply to a post by meditator:

when you highlight F&PS you see a couple of buttons, Install and Uninstall. These are for services to be added to F&PS and appear to include: Service, Protocol and Client. Which, if any, of these three should I ensure are added, and which sub-services?

Never used them! But if click on Install & then Add one of those, it will invite you to install some obscure features, like Netware & Adverts, and it seems you need a CD. So can't see that any of them are interesting unless you have specialist requirements.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Tue 22-Apr-14 15:29:10)

No, I don't mean an icon in the Systray.

(I don't know which version of Windows you're using, but if it's post-XP don't assume that the configuring of networking and the way it's presented onscreen are exactly the same).

No, my router does not use UPnP.

Apart from these oddities, everything seems to be working okay at present.