Vista Passwordless Printer Sharing

Question

Is it possible to share files over lan with password protection turned on for file sharing but at the same time have the printer not prompt for password? The OS is Vista.

Answer 1

No. Once you enable password protection, all filesharing / printer connections must be authenticated with a valid system username and a password. The closest you could achieve would be to create a guest account and set a password on it (i.e., guest), and then let people use that if they do not have another account on the Vista computer.