How do I password protect a folder on XP-PRO not on network

title says it all, I just want to password protect a folder. Running XP-Pro, have friends who use the computer, dont want to set up individual accounts, is there a way to put a password on a folder?

 

You can try this:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4484

Or you can try zipping up the folder in question and putting a password on it with winzip or perhaps zip-genius.

Another way is to create a new compressed (zipped) folder with a password. This method is built into windows ME and XP.

 

Basicly as has been said you'd use some sort of third party program. There is no built in way to achieve this. If you have pro edition, you can remove everyones rights from the folder in question and then nobody can open it untill you go back and give your account rights again. The downside to this is that if they are computer savy they can simply add the accounts back on the secrity tab as there is no way to password protect it, but it's the best you can do without using some third party program or creating other accounts.

 

Could you please explain how to do this with the built in tool? As far as I knew it did not support setting a password. Now I went to check and to be honest I can't find the stupid tool. I never use the thing but I am curios to see if I'm wrong.

Edit: Well, I didn't find hwo to make a zip, but I did manage to open a zip with the built in tool and I can see it does let you add a password. SO I guess I was wrong.

ALthough I don't really consider that a viable method of password protecting a folder because personally when I password protect a folder it's got loads of stuff in there and making a zip and putting a password on it could take over an hour to do. Same goes for any form of archieve. Although I suppose for those people not storing 100GB+ it could work. Of course it only works for under 4GB's since zips will fail if you make one bigger then 4GB's.

 

Without third party software, you can't password protect a folder. You can, however, encrypt a folder (making it readable only to your user ID, but this makes it nigh impossible to recover damaged files) or modify the security membership of a folder (and subfiles) to grant or deny access. If you do the latter, make sure you stop permission inheritance or Adminisrative users can take ownership or change the permissions on the folder themselves.

This is assuming your disk is NTFS and not FAT32. Most of them are.

 

My bad. Looks like there's no way to stop members of the Administrators group from taking ownership of a file or folder, and ownership gives you the ability to do pretty much whatever you want.

 

I'm surprised no one posted this:

Cryptainer LE
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Cryptainer_LE_d1483.html


Just came in today. Though, it seems it can only encrypt and password protect 20 megabyte folders.

 

Another apllication, not listed here at MG, that can encrypt folders and files is, AxCrypt.