In come cases you want a hard link to a networked file - i.e. for an Apache server.
Windows XP does support hard linking:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil_hardlink.mspx?mfr=true
In short, the command line syntax to create the hard link is:
*fsutil hardlink* *create* *NewFilename* *ExistingFilename* |