XP access drom 98/98se

:sadwin: I am in a LAN and on my LAN i have varied type os OSs various versions of Windows and various Linux distros. I have windows XP. I have restricted access to my PC only to a few person than to everybody by editing security policies. The username for remote access is Guest. The problem is when someone accesses my PC from LAN and has win 2000/XP it ask for username and password and they get access to shaerd resources but for 98/98se it only propmts for password to IPC$ and no username ........... i tried all password including that are required for shared resource access as well as admin password but no use.......so 98/98se persons are unable to access my shared resources. any idea how can i make 98/98se persons access my shared aresources and also keep it locked with username password.

The second probnlem is when ever i try to connect to default shared resources(on XP from anyother machine) that is ADMIN$,C$,D$ etc it asks for username and password....but all valid usernames and passwords fail including that of ADMIN so who can access those shares if not the ADMIN????? any idea

I am not entirely sure about this but let me show you my LAN spesification in my office:
There are 3 servers here, and 400 clients in my office
1st and 3rd mainframe running win2k adv server, and 2nd mainframe running SuSE 8.1, and here i got many OS on my clients Nix and Wins. But there are no problem by accessing the sile sharing source. I made it on 2 domain and then cluster them into one, win98/me still can take the source from any computer here. Perhaps u should set WINS and "files and printer sharing " tool on your clients or mainframe, becoz perhaps it can made u beeing close by the computer which you try to get inside.
1. Set the gateway to the mainframe IP
2. Set the WINS to the mainframe IP
and add on the network neighborhood ( on win9x ) or network places ( on wintnt/2k/xp ) "file and printer sharing on microsoft networks"
Start/control panel/network and dial-up connections, right click on local area network and choose properties and add "file and printer sharing on microsoft networks".

I could be wrong about this but thats what i know.

To let your win98/ME-boxes access your XP-box you could set up accounts on your XP-box that matches the accounts on the win98/ME-boxes, eg. if a user logs in as "joe" on a win98-box on your lan, you could set up a "joe" acount on your XP-box aswell.
Passwords does not have to match, as you get promted for these, but if you set the same passwords for the "joe"-account on both the xp and the 98/ME boxes, they wont be promted , they'll just get in instantly.

Not sure why admin would fail for the c$, unless file and print shareing where turned off...as for the 98 boxes at the command line you can do NET USE [devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
[/USER:[domainname\]username]

the domain name is optional, i am assumeing you dont have a domain.

the other option would be to get a cheap nt4 server box or 2k in pdc mode and have every one jon a domain.

In regards to Vigge's post
For XP you should only need to enable to guest account to allow access to the shares. His method will still work, and does offer a bit more control over who accesses the shares, but you must also create a new user on the XP machine every time someone wants to access a share.

i tried the common username and it was successfull ........... thanx o all who suggested it.........and gurture i would like to add that if the common username is guest.........it wont work unser certain circumstances where the XP user has modified local settings to disallow any guest user.....so coomon username worx but if it is not guest...........

Second question still remains unsolved