Not receiving "connect to..." dialog on windows 7 computers

TooCrooked · 28 Aug 2010

THE SITUATION:

i have a LAN that has xp, vista, and 7 computers on it. each computer has an administrative account and a corresponding password.

from all computers as noted above, if i right click on "(my) computer" and select "map network drive" and enter in the IP address and credentials of another workstation on the LAN, i can successfully connect to any share on my LAN.

THEREFORE: all my share configurations are correct on every workstation. i can access network shares without any issues relating to permissions.

MY ISSUE:

from any windows 7 or vista (BUT NOT XP) computers on my network, when i attempt to connect to a share on any other LAN computer through the "run" dialog, i don't receive a "connect to..." dialog box. instead i get a error stating: "Logon failure: user account restriction. Possible reasons are blank passwords not allowed, logon hour restrictions, or a policy restriction has been enforced".

on the other hand, my windows XP computers always get the "connect to" dialog box when accessing shares on other LAN computers. the XP computers get the dialog whether they connect to other XP computers or to the vista or 7 computers.
based on all these observations, i believe some setting in vista/7 makes them connect to UNC shares differently then windows XP does. whatever XP does causes a connect to dialog to come up, and whatever vista/7 does causes the error i spoke of.

MY QUESTION:

what can i change on my windows 7 computers (ignore vista for the sake of answering this question) to make them prompt me for a password just like windows XP does? if you say it can't be changed, please post directly to a microsoft article that proves your assertion.

DO NOT ASK ME WHY I DONT JUST MAP THROUGH THE GUI -- I'M NOT ASKING FOR ANY WORKAROUNDS -- PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION ABOVE DIRECTLY!!!

zigzag3143 · 29 Aug 2010

TooCrooked said:

THE SITUATION:

i have a LAN that has xp, vista, and 7 computers on it. each computer has an administrative account and a corresponding password.

from all computers as noted above, if i right click on "(my) computer" and select "map network drive" and enter in the IP address and credentials of another workstation on the LAN, i can successfully connect to any share on my LAN.

THEREFORE: all my share configurations are correct on every workstation. i can access network shares without any issues relating to permissions.

MY ISSUE:

from any windows 7 or vista (BUT NOT XP) computers on my network, when i attempt to connect to a share on any other LAN computer through the "run" dialog, i don't receive a "connect to..." dialog box. instead i get a error stating: "Logon failure: user account restriction. Possible reasons are blank passwords not allowed, logon hour restrictions, or a policy restriction has been enforced".

on the other hand, my windows XP computers always get the "connect to" dialog box when accessing shares on other LAN computers. the XP computers get the dialog whether they connect to other XP computers or to the vista or 7 computers.
based on all these observations, i believe some setting in vista/7 makes them connect to UNC shares differently then windows XP does. whatever XP does causes a connect to dialog to come up, and whatever vista/7 does causes the error i spoke of.

MY QUESTION:

what can i change on my windows 7 computers (ignore vista for the sake of answering this question) to make them prompt me for a password just like windows XP does? if you say it can't be changed, please post directly to a microsoft article that proves your assertion.

DO NOT ASK ME WHY I DONT JUST MAP THROUGH THE GUI -- I'M NOT ASKING FOR ANY WORKAROUNDS -- PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION ABOVE DIRECTLY!!!

Are you using Homegroup, workgroup, or other?

What encryption are you using?

Have you tried doing run, as, run as admin?

Darician · 29 Aug 2010

In my brief testing (Workgroup, Vista to 7 and 7 to Vista), found that I did get a "Connect to" box however, it took about 45 seconds to finally show up. It appears each of these operating systems attempts to use the credentials you have entered to login to Windows. You could try using cached credentials within User Accounts and it would overcome this problem.

Are these computers in a domain or a workgroup LAN? Additionally, when each computer is logged in under the administrative account, do they all share the same password and account name or are they all different or some overlapping? Also, are these logins centrally managed (Active Directory, LDAP, etc?) It may be a policy restriction on your end because although it does take a while, I eventually do get a window. Right now it's late though and I'm too tired to research. I'll look in the morning or tomorrow afternoon when I have time to see if any specific policies cause this. BTW, this lag happened on both the Vista and 7 sides when attempting to connect to each other.

In my view, you seem to be making a simple situation harder than it needs to be but I'll see if there is a specific policy that causes this or if it's one of those "it's just the way it is" sort of deals as is often the case with Microsoft. Whether I find a Microsoft article supporting that is another matter because searching their support site is quite cumbersome and time consuming.

TooCrooked · 29 Aug 2010

It appears each of these operating systems attempts to use the credentials you have entered to login to Windows.

interesting. what did you do to observe this behavior? i'd like to look at whatever "log" you looked at?

when each computer is logged in under the administrative account, do they all share the same password and account name or are they all different or some overlapping?

this is a "workgroup lan". each computer is locally logged on to by an account that is an administrator, but the account does not have a password.

E.G.:

Comp A:
- 2 accounts
- both admins
- acct 1 = myAccount (no password)
- acct 2 = adminAcct (passworded)
- im always logged into Comp A as acct 1 LOCALLY
- acct 2 is never used to logon LOCALLY
- whenever i need to reach comp A from comp B, C, D, etc, i use acct 2 (because i have to use a passworded account based on local security policy)

every other computer is set up like comp A. the locally logged on user is the same. but of course, it never has a password.

Also, are these logins centrally managed (Active Directory, LDAP, etc?)

workgroup.

In my view, you seem to be making a simple situation harder than it needs to be

it's a million times faster for me to access a CIFS share through run than to map it each time. i don't like persistent mappings. in my experience, when a workstation isn't reachable, the computer with the persistent mapping experiences delays. your opinion is noted, but my way saves me all kinds of milis when it works. and it worked under XP without any issues.

again, as you respond, keep in mind that my XP computer gets the connect to dialog immediatly and it doesn't care what the destination OS is. if you can, test using XP as well.

by the way, was it really necessary to quote my entire post Dari? All you did was make it so that i had to scroll further to see your ... input.

Have you tried doing run, as, run as admin?

what kind of nonsense is this?

kegobeer · 29 Aug 2010

So I understand correctly, you don't get a dialog when connecting from a 7/Vista computer to any other computer - XP, 7, or Vista? Try this test:

On any 7/Vista computer, create a new user. Do not create an identical user on any of the other machines. Now, log on as the new user and try to connect to any other computer. Do you get the dialog?

Also, if you log in as the admin account (that has a password), and you try to connect via command line, do you have any problems?

Lordbob75 · 29 Aug 2010

Out of curiosity, let me ask this:

On a Windows 7 computer, hit start and type \\computername, with computer name being the name of another computer on the network (namely the one you cant reach).
What happens?

~Lordbob

TooCrooked · 29 Aug 2010

kegobeer said:

On any 7/Vista computer, create a new user. Do not create an identical user on any of the other machines. Now, log on as the new user and try to connect to any other computer. Do you get the dialog?

i DID!! HOLY FLARGIN SHIFT! Thank god someone could look at this with a new pair of eyes!

I get it - since my username was sent and it matched the username on the other workstation, it tried to authenticate that way!!! Wow!! Great diagnosis!! I've asked this question before and got no where near this solution!!

But it does take it a while like noted before.. :\ wtflip.

Fixed.

edit:
How do i mark a thread as resolved??