Simultaneous file access on networked Windows XP PCs

My customer has a remote office that has a server and three networked PCs. All operate with Microsoft XP. The problem is only one PC can access the main office files at a time. If two users try to connect, one will either be denied access or one will be disconnected. Individually, there is no problem. How can I help them fix this problem?

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Your customer's users are probably trying to concurrently open the same file with read/write access. Windows does not allow this because it can cause the users to have inconsistent (and possibly corrupted) views of the file. If the users are not changing the files, it may, depending on the application, be possible to work around the problem by marking the share permission as read-only. This Microsoft support article has the necessary details.

This was first published in June 2007

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