mad_raven

As long as the shares aren't setup to allow everyone access to them, then I believe that disabling the password protected sharing won't have any effect on anything other than the public shared folders and the printers (however I could be wrong). I will test when I get home tonight and let you know what I find, as the machine I was using at work is used by someone else. EDIT: Right I have just tested it on my machine at home and with the password protected sharing enabled I was unable to connect to the machine's printers or shares without entering a password. Once I disabled 'Password Protected Sharing' I was able to access the printers and the public shared folders but not the other shares. The other file shares will only allow people who are authorised to access them, but won't ask for a password from those that aren't. (just like XP shares) Tested on Vista Ultimate X64 with Vista Home Premium as the second machine

On the machine I tested it on there was an option directly below the printer sharing option which gave the option of turning the password on or off. As far as I'm aware the password option was only for the printers, and as soon as I turned it off I was able to gain access to the machines printers, but not the file shares. I was testing on a machine running Vista Business attached to a workgroup. Although I see no reason why the option shouldn't be available on other versions.

In the 'Network and Sharing Center' on the Vista machine check that Printer sharing is enabled and that it isn't password protected. If it is then there is an option further down to disable the password protection.