Filesharing in different workgroups

[Omega Destroyer]

I just quickly wanted to know if it's possible to share files in windows xp pro when computers are in different workgroups.
I know it can be done by creating a local account for the person that wants access, but I don't want to do that.
Is there an alternative way of doing this?

[sandrock]

Yes it is very possible. An easy way to do this would be to go to start, run and type in \\thecomputersname - this will save you the trouble of searching for it through network neighborhood.

[Omega Destroyer]

I've tried this, but it only kind of works. I can access the computer and see the first layer of the folder tree, but I can't see any sub-directories, nor can I download any files that are in the main directory. It give me the typical no access rights error message.
I can see the computer, and I can see it's shares, but I can't access them.

[Smokeys]

Then you are having a permissions problem, make sure the user has read rights, or through adding the Guest account or the everybody account and giving them read access.

[Omega Destroyer]

It is a permissions problem, but I don't want to open the guest account, or open it up to everyone on that network, I just want the one person to access it.

I can't add them in particular to the permissions, because when you try and add people, it only searches for users in the current location (the computer I'm on), and no other computers are listed where I can search for users.

This means that either I have to create a local account as mentioned above, or somehow find out how to search for user accounts on different computers.

Windows just won't allow you to add computer2\user2

[Smokeys]

On the machine with the share, setup an account with their username and password and give that the permissions, they won't be prompted.

[Omega Destroyer]

Yeah, but the problem is that I don't want to create a local account for them, there must be a way to do this without creating a bunch of useless accounts on the one computer.

[Kendan]

Check this out for more info: http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_filesharing/index.htm