As brontosaurus said, you can use EFS to protect your files. Are the files to be stored centrally in a file share on a server? If so, is the file share your "home folder?" If this is the case, and your administrator has configured the permissions correctly, then you (and possibly the administrator) are the only individuals whom should have access to the files within the share. If you have access to the server, create a folder on one of the local drives and place the files within that folder. Then, right-click the folder, go to properties then security. You can then add anyone that you wnat to have permissions to your files. One word of caution, if you share this folder, the default for Windows 2000 is to give the everyone group full control so you will have to remove that group and add yourself.