[Russell Morton]

Does anyone know of a shareware folder password protection program that...
works on networked XP Home systems
allows different passwords on different folders
work when the protected folder is "attached" to another PC on the network.

[lunarlander]

Windows uses user accounts to control access. If you reboot to safe mode, and right click folder properties, you will see a security tab. There you can control which user has access to which folder. So if each user has his own account, he will only have access to those folders meant for him.

[DoubleHelix]

I would not recommend lunarlander's suggestion to a home user. This is only moderately effective if only one person has an administrator level account. Nearly all home users give everyone administrator rights. They could easily log in and "take ownership" of the files and folders.

Even if the other users have limited privileged accounts, it's not difficult to change the Administrator account password and gain access to the data.

To truly protect the files, you'd have to use a third-party encryption utility. And I'm not sure if they protect against file / folder deletion by other accounts.

[lunarlander]

Well, if the attacker is walking over with a ERD cd ....

Try truecrypt. (http://www.truecrypt.org/) It doesnt offer protection against deletion like DoubleHelix says. But at least it keeps the data secret.