Back-to-School: Turn Off File & Printer Sharing

Those of us with home networks usually share files, or at least printers, across our network.

This nice feature allows several computers to share and use one or more printers. At my house, we share an HP Laserjet 1200 and an HP ColorJet printer. That way, any printer can print color pages when we need them or print black and white laser quality pages (which also happen to be cheaper!).

But, as we send our children off to college, there's a step that they need to take.

Windows allows us to easily turn OFF the "Windows File and Printer Sharing" in one place, rather than having to go and block each shared folder, drive or printer.

First, go to Start, then click on Control Panel, Network and Internet Connections, and Network Connections.

You'll get a Network Connections dialog box similar to this. My network connection is an Ethernet connection, but yours might be wireless. Right-click on the network connection you use, then select "Properties" from the context menu that pops up.



At that point, you'll get the Network Connection Properties box for that particular connection.

You may need to use the scroll bar to see "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks". Once you find File and Printer Sharing, uncheck the checkbox to turn off File and Printer Sharing. Then, click on the OK button.