Linking two computers through Network

Ralph113 said:

When I try to open a folder on my network I get access denied. I made my Network folders open to Everyone.

Any more suggestions?

"Network folders"?? What do you mean?

Have you facilitated sharing (on the Vista machine which is trying to be accessed from the Win7 machine) for the drive as a whole?

Have you actually "taken ownership" of the drive on the Vista machine, and reassigned the owner as "Everyone"?



I remember when I first tried to get my Win7 and WinXP systems to allow access to/from each other, I had a problem because of the opposite approach taken by the two systems to default permissions. Only when I manually went through each of my partitions (i.e. drive letters) on each machine, and manually changed ownership and permissions to be one common "everyone" (or my userid which was used commonly on both systems, and which had administrator rights), and manually "took ownership" and granted full access to "everyone", was I finally able to overcome the exact same problem you're describing.

I would have thought that Vista and Win7 would have had the same approach to permissions, though WinXP was backwards. So I wouldn't have expected this to be necessary for your Vista system. But I'd certainly investigate the "permissions" angle of your Vista drive(s).

It's a permissions issue, I'm confident. Right-click on the drive, Properties, Security, and Advanced. Then check the permissions, and the owner. I'd suggest "taking ownership" of the Vista drive(s) and just manually assigning your userid on that machine as the owner, and then delete all permissions and add just one... for "everyone", with full control.

My sympathies to your headache.


P.S. I do not use the "HomeGroup" arrangement of Win7. Also, I've defined my home LAN as a "home network", not a "work network".

And I simply use the old fashioned "work group" approach (a la WinXP), with both machines set up as part of my own named work group (i.e. other than the default "MSHOME" or something).

I still believe it's a permissions issue on your Vista machine which is responsible for your situation.

My setup is very similar to what dsperber posted above. My user name and password are setup on each PC, and work group is set to SOHO on all PCs.
I also don't use Home Group.
On my windows 7 PCs I set the following under "Advanced sharing settings" in the Network and Sharing Center.

Home or Work(current profile)
Network Discovery is on
File and print sharing is turned on
Public folder sharing is off
Use 128 bit encryption is checked
Password protected sharing is also on

I created a folder on each PC and shared it. I locked down my shared folders by adding my user account to the permissions and giving it full access, then I remove the "all users". Only my user account can then access the shared folders. On my daughters netbook, which is the only PC with her user account on it, I just entered my user name and password when prompted and checked the box for remember me. She can access the folders but doesn't know the password. I let her friends use my WIFI when they stay over, this way they can't access the shared folders even though they know my WIFI password.