Windows 7: Trouble Mapping Network Drives in Windows 7

I have my work network setup with ALL Windows 7 machines and up until recently I have had no problems mapping network drives. Now, I'm having trouble mapping a network drive but only from a specific computer, my laptop. I have multiple other PC's on my network mapped to the specific drive in question, which is on my PC. I also have 2 other drives on this PC that are shared with all other computers on my network mapped to them. What is weird is that my laptop (the one that I'm having problems with) is able to connect to one of my other shared drives just fine but not the other. One of the drives is an external HD with eSata, which is the one it can connect to. The other 2 drives are internal HD on my computer, those are the 2 drives I cannot connect to because it says I need permission to connect.



The drives are shared with everyone else on my network just fine and I have been through the normal issues, Network Discovery is ON, password protected sharing is OFF, etc. Like I said, all other computers on this network connect to these drives with no problems. We are all in the same workgroup and homegroup.


I'm trying to understand why this one laptop can't connect to 2 specific drives because it says I don't have permission. When trying to map from my PC to the laptop (basically just going the opposite way to test it) I get the same error.



The error message says "Windows cannot access \\PC\Drive" You do not have permission to access _____. Contact your network admin to request access.





I am able to connect to the Users folder just fine, just not the drive that I need to connect to.


I have attached screenshots of the error messages.



Any help is greatly appreciated!

I dont have a specific answer, but it sounds like a "Sharing" or "Security" setting is different. What I would try, is, on the machine with the drives I want to share, open the "Properties" control on both drives side by side. Then work through the Sharing and Security settings on the drive that works, and set the drive that does not work just like it.

Thanks for the reply. I have tried that..take a look at the attached screenshot...makes no sense to me, anyone? One drive I can connect to fine and the other I cannot because it says I don't have permission, but they both have identical sharing properties. Any clue?

Hi astock - any luck getting this fixed? I am running into a somewhat similar problem.

To share the entire drive you need to use the Security tab of the drive then add Everyone to the list. Link below shows you how. astocks problem was that he was only using the share permissions tab and not the security tab.

windows 7 network drive share?

Hmm.... I have already done that. The problem seems to be something with accessing the computer at all. When I go to "Network" from under the control panel, it shows the computer I need to connect to showing up, but when I try to expand the location, I get that error message. Yet, as I said, it clearly is allowing me to share some things, as I CAN access the public documents folder on that PC through the Homegroup.

If windows updates caused this problem then it's different than the problem the OP was referring too.

You might try uninstalling the updates from when this problem started.