How to password protect folders in xp pro?

N

NleahciM

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Hi there - I want to password protect some specific folders and one entire drive in Windows XP Pro. Everything is formatted NTFS. The drive is an external - and I'd like it to be unusable unless you enter a password. The individual folders are on my primary boot drive and again I'd like you to have to enter a password to get at them.

Is there any way to do this?

Thanks!
 
There's no way to do this without 3rd party apps as far as I know. You can lock folders and files down by user or group, but it won't prompt them for a password.
 
Just don't lose the password... or those files you encrypt are gone forever... and the prudent thing is to back up the encryption certificates also after the encryption is complete. Lose the OS, or the certificates, or the password... you're fucked 3 ways... so...

Remember "The 7 P's":

Prior Planning And Preparation Prevent Piss Poor Performance.


Edit:

Seems the forum is broken again. I posted this at 10:15PM Pacific time, it shows up as 9:50PM, and bigdogchris' post was already there so... his post was first, my post came next, but the forum apparently has other plans...
 
Easiest thing you can do is, create a password for your user account. Then go to those files and encrypt them (under right click, properties). This way, the only way to access them is be logged in under your user name. This way you're protected in the way you want, but your folders can't be accessed unless you're logged in. Easier than having to enter a password for each folder.
 
The other thing you can do, is to make a special group, call it "Pron" for example. Have that user own the folder and all it's contents, and put a Deny from other groups...

You would then have to use Pron and whatever password it is to access...

Totally trivial to defeat, since all administrators can take ownership of the folder and view the stuff anyway, but if all you're going for is a password, that's how...

(Other way is to zip it all, and password protect the zip, the shell will allow you to open with a password)

The true way is EFS, but as the other two posters have said, if you lose your key, kiss your data goodbye...

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
What type of users have access to the data, but are not allowed to read it? And do they have an admin account?
 
I'd say set everyone up with their own 'user' account and set user permissions from there since you're already using NTFS.
 
one way round it could be to mount it as a shared drive with extension $ with some account with the only access then hide it in disk management then access it via \\yourcomputer\pron$ this could theoretically work
 
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