When you share folders on your computer other people on your network can connect to your folders. Do you wonder who's connecting to your shared folders? You can find out using the Computer Management console. This is an especially fun exercise if you're sharing folders on your computer and that computer is directly connected to the Internet, and you're not running any firewall software (or the built-in Internet Connection Firewall) on the machine. Here's how you find the leeches:

1. Click Start and then click the Run command (or use one of the shortcuts you read about above to open the Run dialog box).
2. In the Run dialog box, type compmgmt.msc in the Open text box. Click OK.
3. In the Computer Management console, expand the System Tools node in the left pane by double clicking it if it's not already expanded. Then double click on the Shared Folders node in the left pane of the console.
4. Click on the Shares, the Sessions and the Open Files nodes. You will get information about what folders are shared, which folders have open files, and the name of the user and the file(s) that the user is accessing. If you find users with names that you don't recognize, you've got a problem!

If you want to have fun, right click on an open file and click the Close Open File command. Be aware that if you do this, the user will lose any information that hasn't been saved!