Windows

Assuming you have users and groups in User Manager for Domains, you can deny unwanted access by removing the everyone group from the permissions and add only the users or groups you want to have access to it. Just right click on the share and selectsharing. When the sharing box pops up select the permissions button. You can then select the everyone group, "remove", "add" anyone you want to have access. If you are running NTFS, you can select the security tab on the sharing box to set NTFS permissions to the files as well. A nice feature is you can set the level of access as well. Read-only is nice for files you don't want deleted or changed but people need to be able to see/print. Don't forget to add yourself to those w/ access. Now, noone should be able to access w/o first logging on to the LAN w/ a valid password. Enjoy feeling more secure!

The C$ shares should ONLY be available to adminstators not ordinary users. Check to see that ordinary users have not been made members of the Administrators local group, if so remove them.

In short..there is not a way (that I know of) to set up a password feature for directory shares. But if you are only interested in securing the shares, then answer #1 from steven is the correct procedure.

The other answers did a good job of answering the question but I just wanted to add that the type of password checking you're thinking of IS available when you're sharing a workstation directory from Win95/Win98 but is not available from an NT server because of the domain security model.

So if you thought you had heard it somewhere before you had, but at the peer-peer workstation level.

paul