\\.psf Security Question

Hello, i've just installed parallels for the first time with win xp sp2 and its all working great.

My only question/concern is that xp can see & access my full mac hd through the \\.psf network shortcut placed on my desktop...

Can (or should) I remove this, as I don't want xp to have access to everything. I can see how to enable the shared folders I do want - but do I need to leave \\.psf insecure for this to work?

Sorry if this is a basic question, i've only had my mac a few days, and knowing what windows can do I dont want it to screw it up!

Thanks,

Anthony

 

I've disabled the global sharing and just share my home folder as read-only and a folder in /Users/Shared as read-write to limit write access for the windows programs. I've not had trouble with a windows virus, but I'm not taking the risk of giving it access to my entire home folder.

Cheers

Russell

 

The global share is needed for drag and drop between the VM and the Mac file systems. It is a huge security hole and I turned it off immediately. I don't care about drag and drop so won't miss it.

 

You can still use drag and drop without the global share on, it just uses a slightly different implementation (parallels does the copy rather than windows explorer) but works ok.

Cheers

Russell

 

I definitely do not like the fact that my entire hard drive is shared right from the root without my consent (via the //.psf/.Mac directory). I turned off "Global drag + Drop" a.s.ap., as isolation of my actual OS from the guest is a major part of using an app. like parallels.

I'm much more fond of Parallels doing the copying for me instead of Windows itself, that degree of separation is important. I'm really glad this build (3120) can in fact do drag/drop that way, and I think that should be the default option. (A warning should perhaps be issued when the other method is enabled)

 

I agree. The older implementation of drag-n-drop is much preferred to the new one.

Security is one of the main reasons I keep my Windows locked up in a VM. I don't want it to be able to mess with my files.