On a Windows 2000 Professional computer, the president of your company collects managers weekly reports in a shared folder named Reports. Because these reports contain sensitive financial information, she asks you to prevent users from enabling Offline Files for the network share that contains these reports. What should you do to prevent users from caching these files offline?

Introduction / Context:
This question focuses on controlling Offline Files caching at the server or share level in a Windows 2000 environment. The Reports share contains sensitive data, and the requirement is to prevent any client from making those files available offline. You must know where the setting to disable caching for a specific share is configured and why this is preferable to client side changes.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• The president uses a Windows 2000 Professional computer with a shared folder named Reports.
• Managers connect to this share to submit or view weekly financial reports.
• The information is sensitive, and offline caching on client machines is not desired.
• You have administrative access to configure sharing and caching options on the president's computer.

Concept / Approach:
Offline Files can be controlled both globally at the client and individually at the share. On the server or workstation that hosts the share, you can configure the share properties and choose whether the files are available offline. By disabling caching for the share, you prevent clients from using Offline Files on that particular network folder, even if they have Offline Files enabled locally. This targets the sensitive data directly and avoids changing global client behaviour for other shares.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Open Windows Explorer on the president's Windows 2000 Professional computer.Step 2: Right click the Reports folder, select Sharing, and view the share properties.Step 3: Access the caching or Offline Files settings for the share and select the option to disable caching for this shared folder.Step 4: Confirm that clients will no longer be able to mark files in this share as available offline.

Verification / Alternative check:
Windows 2000 offers options such as allowing only manually cached files, caching no files, or caching all files. Documentation confirms that disabling caching on a share prevents Offline Files from being used with that share. This approach is commonly used for highly sensitive or frequently changing data where keeping local copies would be undesirable or confusing.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Option a disables Offline Files at the client side, but this would affect all shares and might conflict with other legitimate offline usage requirements. Option c changes access levels but does not directly control caching; read only files can still be cached. Option d applies a broad Group Policy that may be too restrictive and does not specifically target the Reports share. Option e altering share permissions without addressing caching does not meet the requirement and could disrupt legitimate access.

Common Pitfalls:
Administrators sometimes attempt to control Offline Files only from client computers, forgetting that share level options exist. Another pitfall is to overuse domain wide policies when a simple share level configuration would solve the problem. For sensitive folders, it is best practice to explicitly disable caching on the share so that no client can create offline copies of the data.

Final Answer:
You should use Windows Explorer on the president's computer to disable caching for the Reports network share so that users cannot enable Offline Files for that sensitive folder.