Apache Friends Support Forum

Hi there. I'm newbie here. This is my latest doubt.
I have several html documents linked between them, some of them using PHP 5. I'm using XAMPP for Windows, but Iwould like to know how to protect some pages using .htaccess files using XAMPP (version for Linux).

The file distribution is the following(more or less):
./admin/admin.html
./admin/aplicadmin/reg1.php
./admin/aplicadmin/reg2.php
I want admin.html protected by .htaccess. From this html document you can access reg1.php and reg2.php, but after you are accessing via admin.html, i don't want them to require a password again.
Should I place .htaccess in ./admin directory?
And what .htaccess file do I place in de ./admin/aplicadmin directory?
Also, I have in the same in the parent directory of ./admin/ ( see below) a xml file that i dont want to be exported. May I protect it the same way as in Apache-linux?
Thanks a lot. Xampp is just wonderful.

P.S. I supposse the whole path should be something like this:
./xampp/htdocs/aplication/admin/......... Is this right?