Share files and printers across your network

You can elect which files or folders to share on each computer, but only the individual user who has administrative privileges can apply the settings. To check who has these privileges, go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > User Accounts. If you're the only user, then you're the Administrator.

To share a specific folder, right-click its icon in My Computer and select Sharing And Security. Click the Sharing tab and select Share This Folder. After you give the folder a name, all the computers in your workgroup can see its contents.

By default, users will have read-only access to these files and won't be able to save any changes or create new files of their own. To let users make changes to the files, right-click a file, select Sharing And Security, then the Sharing tab, and this time hit Permissions. In the new window, check Full Control, Change, or Read.