Windows 7: Need help resolving "Enter Network Password" issue

I reached the limit of my patience well over an hour ago, and I'm praying that someone has the answer I can't seem to find anywhere.

I have three PCs: Hal, Falcon, and Athena. Hal and Falcon are desktops running 7 Ultimate x64. Athena is a netbook running 7 Home Premium 32bit. All of them played nicely with each other across the network, and not a single "Enter Network Password" prompt was to be found. From Hal I could get into Athena and Falcon, from Athena I could get into Hal and Falcon, you get the idea.

Yesterday, I reformatted Athena with the same OS it has now, 7 Home Premium 32bit. Post install, things went pear shaped. Athena can get into Hal and Falcon. Hal and Falcon can get into each other. Hal and Falcon cannot get into Athena. From both of those machines, I get an "Enter Network Password" prompt. I spent literally all day looking for a solution. I did not find one. I rebooted, I searched, I double checked all the settings, I ran a troubleshooter that said I didn't have permission to access the Share (this is the default Share by the way, the User Folder Share), so with my limited knowledge I checked the Permissions. To my eyes, everything was identical to the other two computers, and there was no reason I shouldn't be able to walk right in.

Today, I spent much of the day, again, looking for answers before finally giving up this evening in frustration and reformatting again. After the format, things looked good, I got in! I ran Windows Update, tried the Network again, and I was back where I started. "Enter Network Password". So I reformatted a THIRD time. Again, straight off the first boot, things work just as expected, and then, literally no more than five minutes later, as I'm attempting to move my backup over the network, having not done a SINGLE thing to Athena, "Enter Network Password".



I am, as I said, at the very end of my patience, nevermind knowledge. I have no idea where to even start trying to figure this out anymore, and I NEED all three computers to play nicely together. My user account is the same name, the same password, across all machines. And yet Windows Security's "Enter Network Password" refuses my credentials irregardless of how I type them in.

To make matters even stranger, while none of my Windows PCs can access Athena, I have three separate Macs that find the Share and mount it without any problem at all.

What is this problem, where did it come from, and why is it a problem NOW, on this hardware, on this system, when it wasn't before I formatted? Nothing has changed! Someone please tell me you know what's happening and how I can resolve this. I'm pulling my hair out restraining myself from breaking something.

It looks like you already are using different names for each PC, such as Hal-PC and so on.

Other that that make sure the time/date settings are in sync with those machines as this will cause problems such as you are describing.

Time and date settings are correct across all machines and have been since the beginning. It makes no difference.

You mentioned using the same User name on all these machines, have you tried setting up a different User name on all machines?

I have. I made a new administrator account on Athena, attempted using the new credentials when it requested a network password. No joy.

Have you tried to set up a Homegroup on these machines?

Did you disable the "use a password to connect" in the Advanced sharing settings?

I haven't tried to set up a Homegroup because I need them all to talk to the Macs at least some of the time, and I've heard Homegroups don't play well with anything outside Windows 7. As for disabling "use a password to connect", I've been down that road a dozen times it seems, hasn't made a single difference yet.

I'm playing with it again now. Just installed different drivers for the network adapters (couldn't hurt, replaced Window's default ones), disabled the Share and recreated it (I've done that a dozen times or more as well, no change), and once again tried to look at Permissions to see if something was different compared to the other machines (assuming I'm looking at the right thing, no, they're identical).

There are ways to make the Homegroup work with Macs but I'm sure you wouldn't be interested in that.

Have you been to Windows update with the netbook yet?

Yes. In fact before I reformatted the second time, it was completely up to date. I thought perhaps an update was what killed it, but it does it straight off a fresh install within a few minutes of the first boot as well.

Can you check to see that the C drive is shared by right clicking the C drive then to properties, then click on the Sharing tab then click on the Advanced sharing tab. Put a check mark to share this folder, then hit the apply button. After that click the Permissions button and put check marks to give full access for Everyone then hit the Apply button again.

This is just to check and see if it's a permissions issue or not, you can easily undue all this by doing the reverse.

After that check to see if you can access the folders on the netbook.

I'm assuming that all these machines are using the same Workgroup name.

You can perform this action on any folder or you can share out the entire User folder this way if desired.