I will be grateful to find a comparison of features between XP Advanced File Sharing and XP Simple File Sharing in the context of a P2P XP file and printer sharing network where security is not an issue.

Quite simply, AFS requires the use of a valid ID and password to access
network resources, whereas SFS uses the Guest account on both computers to
make the connection.  This assumes the Guest account is enabled and
available on both PCs - when it is not, SFS won't work.

For illustration's sake, assume a two-PC network (PC1 and PC2).  John is
logged onto PC1 and wants to access a printer or file share on PC2.  With
Simple File Sharing he can do so by simply accessing the share since the
Guest account is used between PC1 and PC2 for shared resources.  With
Advanced file Sharing in use, either John must already have an account on
PC2 with the same name (and password, if one is used) that allows access to
the share, or John must supply the name (and password, if one is used) of a
user of PC2 who is authorized to access the shares.

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Oh yes, and SFS disables certain shares (My Documents, Program Files, etc).

I probably forgot something else crucial and someone will correct me
shortly. :-)

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<johnsuth@nospam.com.au> wrote in message
'Advanced File Sharing' is exactly the same as NT-based file sharing has
always been.

User accounts are created on the machine with the shared resources.  When
you create shares, you create a list of users who are permitted to access
them.   This is called an Access Control List, or ACL.

When a remote user attempt to connect to a share, the username and password
are checked against the ACL, and access is granted or denied.

There are 2 sets of permissions which the remote user needs to get past:
The share permissions, and the NTFS file permissions.

You can use a combination of these to provide fine granularity on the access
permissions.

Here's an example walk-through of how to configure this:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_filesharing/

Simple File Sharing was introduced with XP because it was reckoned that it
was a bit much to expect home users to become NT admins overnight.

It hides the complexies fron the user, and sets up all shares like this:

It enables the Guest account,
It forces all incoming connections to authenticate as Guest, regardless of
who they are;
It created shares with permissions for the Gust account;
It uses NTFS permissions to block access to certain folders.

The net result is that if you share a folder using Simple FIle Sharing, it's
available to anyone on the network.  You have no fine control on the
permissions.

XP Network doesn't allow new computer to access
Access Denied
Computer user & domain user
use net 1 time and no more
Can't access printer through second network card
Net Send
NetBT Error
Local site redirection
Server drive renamed
Deleting under My Network Places