PCWinSoft File Sharing Pro

Audio : MP3, WMA, WAV, WAX, AIF, AIFF, MID, MIDI.
Video : WMV, MOV, MPG, MPEG, MPE, AVI, ASF, ASX.
Image : JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, DIB, TIF, TIFF.
Documents : SWF, DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF, TXT, ASC, ZIP, XML, TAR.

– This does NOT make EXISTING files findable over the web via a web address.

– Files must be COPIED to this program’s ‘publish’ directory.

– This does NOT even answer some of it’s own [ F1 ] help inquiries, instead offering “This link is no longer valid.”, for example, in response to [ http :// www. pcwinsoft. com/1AVCenter/user_guide/HTM/firewall_proxy. htm ].

I found ‘help.chm’ in C:\Program Files (x86)\FileSharingPro\Help . . . which round-about directs me to a web page the offers $39 software to ‘forward ports’, presumably so this program can work.

– And some help pages are blank, saying only ‘Can’t reach this page’, and NO help.

Dead end.

Yeah, this program is ‘helpless’, we’re on our own.

Anyway, trial and error leads me to
– start the program as Administrator to change some settings,
– turn on our Internet router’s port forwarding for HTTP,
– for our computer’s internal/in-house network address, such as 192.168.1.13 ( sample),
– and set the port as 8075, ( we can change this together with the program’s Web Server Settings if we want something other than . . . :8075 )
– then, any external computer ‘browsing’ to your public IP address, such as [ http :// 144. 48. 106. 18 : 8075 ] ( fake example ) will see our public offering as created by this PCWinSoft software.

Note:

– The web address is . . . : 8075, not . . . : 80, such as [ http :// 127. 0. 0. 1 : 8075 ] to see and test one’s own self from one’s own computer.

– When browsing to our served web page, it asks for a name and ( password ) . . . we can create them FIRST – the out-of-the-box default is admin ( admin )

– it only shares COPIES of files that we COPY into the program’s ‘publish’ directory,

– it does NOT share existing files in their native directory locations,

– so beware of trying to share existing directories or entire drives,

– it does NOT even share directories that are pointed to by a shortcut dropped into the program’s ‘publish’ directory.

It has this “Storage Root Folder” structure:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\alert
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\live
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\picture
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\publish
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\recordings
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\runtime
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\snap
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\support
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\upload
C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\webback

They are essentially meaningless, except
– ‘publish’ is where we publish files,
– ‘upload’ holds files that visitors upload.

We can put anything we want to share in ‘publish’, then start the program, and stat the server, and it may find our COPIES of our files, and ‘publish’ them:
– showing our video COPIES in ‘My Videos’ on the web,
– showing our audio COPIES in ‘My Music’ on the web,
– showing our PDF and doc COPIES in ‘My Documents’ on the web,
… and so on.

– it does NOT actually move the files, it just presents different file types via separate access web links, they ‘look’ like they are in different directories, but they are not, they all sit in ‘publish’.

Since it does NOT move the files to the appropriate directories, it’s NOT a directory/file-structured file server.

I used Windows File Explorer to quickly ‘stuff’ the ‘publish’ directory.

Alternatively, inside the program:
– to collect copies of files to share, select ‘Tab’, ‘Web Server’,
– then select one of the ‘categories’ such as ‘Videos’, ‘Images’, ‘Audio’, Documents’, and so on,
– then select ‘File’, ‘Import’, and browse our computer for the type of file appropriate for the ‘tab’, that is, if we selected ‘Videos’, it will then only ‘see’ video files on our computer to collect and copy to ‘publish’,
– repeat this for each ‘tab’ and repeat for each file type.

Hence, I used Windows File Explorer, where I just copied whatever I wanted to the ‘publish’ directory, then started the program, over and over, exiting and restarting, and started the server, over and over, and eventually it ‘found’ my files, and ‘distributed’ them on the web-server-display on remote visiting computers ( though it left the files in place in ‘publish’ on the web server itself ).

We can change the ‘root’, but it will always build …\File Sharing Pro\… under whatever ‘root’ we point to, so if we want to share our C:\Documents, we cannot, it will immediately share C:\Documents\File Sharing Pro\… instead.

I tried to force it to share my pre-ordained directories:
– I opened the registry and found:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\PCWinSoft\File Sharing Pro\Stor\location
– and found
[ dir ] ‘REG_SZ’ value: C:\Users\Public\Documents\File Sharing Pro\
– and I changed it to my preferred directory to share, such as C:\Documents\
– and it barked at me, saying
– “Folder structure is not created. Please re-install to correct the problem.”
– I re-installed the program, and started the whole process again.

I’m guessing that they do NOT want this program to be used to share EXISTING files, but ONLY to share intentionally moved/copied files – so we can’t use it to stealthily share someone’s entire computer without their knowledge.

BUT, I ‘looked’ at my shared website from another computer and it did not predictably show changes, additions, and deletions that I made manually at the server – I had to exit and re-start the program, and start and stop and re-start the server many times, before everything I did was recognized and shared.

Visitors can’t delete anything, not even files they uploaded themselves.

The program logs every interaction.

This is a subset of, and integrates with, their web cam software, so some features may lay dormant when used only as a web file server.

– – – – – – – – – –

Conclusion: If we are patient, diligent, and if we can navigate the arduous routine of importing file types into tabs, or luck out by mass importing manually into ‘publish’ via Windows File Explorer, then we may be able to see our COPIES remotely, and visitors can ‘drop’ files to us directly.

– – – – – – – – – –

Recommendations for improvement:

– make this a directory/file-structured web-server that can be ‘pointed’ at an existing directory structure.

Thanks for letting us explore this and share.
.