Mar 21 2006
Persuading XP Pro to give me Win2k style file ACL Security tab
Since upgrading to XP Pro I’ve been wondering why I could no longer access the fine-grained Access Control Lists for files and directories that used to be available in the Security tab of the file/folder Properties dialog in Win2k. Instead there’s this very friendly file sharing tab instead, which although simple isn’t what I want.
However I’ve just located the setting that needs to be changed to give me back control over the system!
First open Explorer and from the menu bar select ‘Tools > Folder Options’ and click the ‘View’ tab from the dialog that appears. Scroll to the bottom of the Advanced Settings panel and you’ll see an option titled ‘Use simple file sharing (Recommended)’. This will be set by default on XP (unless, I believe, it’s XP Pro and has been added to a domain). Switching it off puts back the Security tab.