Last week I showed you how to set up a home file server using Ubuntu Linux, this week I'll show you how to do the same thing only this time using Microsoft Windows XP.

The first thing you need is to make sure that your system has the minimum system requirements to run XP. They aren't nearly as high as Vista's so you should be okay.

Processor: 300MHz AMD/Intel
Memory: 128MB
Hard Drive: 1.5GB space

Those of course are the minimum requirements, personally I would reccommend the following

Processor: 600MHz AMD/Intel
Memory: 256MB
Hard Drive: 100GB (same as I recommended for Ubuntu for system and storage space)

The first thing to do of course would be to install Windows XP, so put your XP disc into the drive and turn on your PC. After it gets past the BIOS, it should prompt you to press a key to enter setup. So press a key and enter setup.

**Note: If it doesn't prompt you, it probably means its trying to boot off the hard drive first, in which case you need to go into the BIOS and change the boot order. See your motherboard or PC instructions for how to do that on your individual machine.

So go on through the setup and follow the prompts. When it gets to the hard drive partitioning and where to install Windows, set aside 10-20GB for the Windows partition leaving the rest for data storage, we'll set that up later. For the rest of the setup, just follow the prompts as they're presented to you. Make sure to note what you named your computer.

Ok, I'm now going to assume you completed the setup and are now looking at your Windows Desktop.  The first thing you're going to want to do is install Anti-Virus software. If you have your own, go ahead and use that, otherwise feel free to try out ClamWin, its free and pretty good. Make sure to get the latest virus definitions. The next thing to do is to install all of the updates for XP. You can just go to Microsoft Update to do that. Make sure to go there several times and restarts later to make sure you have all the updates. (yes it's annoying but sadly unavoidable)

I'll now assume your computer now has antivirus installed and all the latest updates so we're ready to go. If you right click on My Computer and click Manage, the computer management window pops up.

Click on Disk Management towards the bottom. You'll be presented with the disk management tool.

You should see your C partition and next to it you should see unpartitioned space. (it won't look just like mine so don't worry) You want to right click it and select Format. Create a partition on it taking up all the free space. The partition should be Primary NTFS partition. Let it do its thing and when its done, you should have a new drive letter for the partition.

Ok, now that your data storage partition is all set up, open up My Computer. In the Tools menu at the top, select Folder Options. In the View tab, scroll all the way to the bottom and uncheck Use Simple Sharing. Apply your changes and close the box.

Now go into your data partition and create the folder structure you want to set up. Once you have all the folders created, right click on the folders you want to share and click on Sharing and Security.

Give your share a name. You can give it a comment too if you want, but its not required. Next thing to do is to click the Permissions button.

You can leave Everyone there if you want, just make sure to only give read access. Otherwise just click Everyone and then click Remove. Now you need to add your user. First, click the Add button.

Type in your username and then click OK. Now we want to give your user the ability to write to the share. If you don't need or want this, ignore the following step. Click on your username and click the checkbox Full Control. All the boxes should then be checked under the Allow column, so hit Apply and then OK. Repeat the steps on any other shares you want to make, just make sure you note the share names.

OK, your server is pretty much all set up, all you now need to do is map them on your normal machine. From last week here's the set of instructions.

In windows, go to Start - Run and type in:

\\servername\share

Where servername is the computer's name, which you set during the install process. So for my photo share if I named my server "Darker" then I would enter:

\\darker\photos

This should then ask you for a username and password (the one you set up using the smbpasswd command earlier), or if your windows username and password are the same as the samba username and password you set, then it should just bring up an explorer window with your share. In Windows, you have the option of mapping shares to drives so a share would be given an actual drive letter like a hard drive and DVD drive are given. To do this, right click on My Computer and select 'Map Network Drive'. The following dialog box should come up.

The first field will let you choose which drive letter to assign it to, it doesn't matter so pick one. (it won't let you choose one that's already in use). The second field is where you type in your share name, which we went over in the last paragraph. The final checkbox determines whether the share should connect every time you log in. Since I'm going to assume that you want to be able to access the share all the time, you can just leave it checked. Just click 'Finish'. If it asks for a username and password, then enter it, otherwise it should pop up an explorer window showing the contents of the share.

So there you have it, you now have your very own file server to host your files on. While this may sound obvious to some, in order for people to be able to access the shares you create, you must keep the server turned on.

Again, if you have any questions, comments, need clarification, or have an alternative method, feel free to let me know.

Tags: windows, microsoft, howto, server