Windows'' Confusing As Hell Printer And File Sharing

[PoisonedV]

So I'm going to a LAN party next week, and I never really took this into account but I hear alot of filesharing and stuff goes on, and I'm kind of worried. Windows printer and file sharing makes no sense at all to me, and I saw that my printers were shared on my network without me even doing anything. anyone know how i can lockdown the printer and file sharing? this stuff is convoluted as hell.

 

[gruso]

By default, XP's "simple" sharing will share your printers, and also create dedicated shared folders, which should be displayed in Explorer. (Shared Documents, Shared Pictures, yada yada). If you've never added anything to these, they'll be empty. Your "My Documents" folder will -not- be shared, so even if you do nothing, it's safe.

If you want to stamp out all sharing though, a quick way is to open Start > Settings > Network Connections, and run the Network Setup Wizard. You'll be given the option to turn off File & Printer sharing.

 

[Phawx]

If you want to turn sharing off

Goto start > run > services.msc then go to server and right click on it and choose "stop"

the next time you reboot it should start again automatically. Unless you goto properties and choose to disable it or make it manual.

 

[Titcher]

If you want to share files without using the windows file sharing you could install FileZilla FTP server and just give out your IP and FTP usernames.

 

[Squidge]

So I'm going to a LAN party next week, and I never really took this into account but I hear alot of filesharing and stuff goes on

Depends on the kind of LAN party. The ones I goto no one is allowed to share any files whatsoever (actually, any open connection is frowned upon), and the people that do normally get the net admins having a word with them. If they persist, they get removed from the event. Sharing is still pretty easy however, as there's a dedicated file sharing server, so you just upload your stuff to it via FTP and people leech it the same way. This way they can protect against viruses, malware, copyrighted stuff, etc.

But yes, it's easy enough to turn off sharing, just right click a drive, go into sharing, and then run the network setup wizard and click the "I don't want to share" box.