Why are credentials not accepted via dialog?

One thing about Windows Networking that annoys me without end and since years (i.e. since XP via Vista and now Win7) is, that whenever I try to access a share on one of my other systems and I am prompted to enter my credentials then this never works. I always have to fire up a command line and issue "net use <pwd> /user:<domain>\<user>" and then I need to click the shortcut to that share again.

If I enter the very same info, namely <domain>\<user> and <pwd> directly into the "Enter Network Password" dialog that pops up, when I click my local shortcut to that share, this NEVER works.

Why is that so? What can one possibly do, to make that dialog accept the (domain\)uid and pwd directly?

Michael

I don't have an answer why it doesn't work but... If you put your user account on the other machine and give it permissions to the share you wont have to enter anything at all.

Not true! I *have* the same account (I guess you mean username) on both machines and both accounts use the same password, but that's obviously not sufficient to obtain automatic access.

As I said, on systemA, the only way to obtain access to a share on systemB is to issue a

net use <commonpwd> /user:<systemB>\mmo

to obtain access.

In a dialog that pops up when clicking a link pointing e.g. to

\\systemB\somesharename

I can enter whatever I want, like:

uid: mmo
pwd: <commonpwd>

or

uid: systemB\mmo
pwd: <commonpwd>

or

uid: systemA\mmo
pwd: <commonpwd>

but NONE of these will be accepted!

Michael

kegobeer said:

... First - in XP, have you disabled simple file sharing?...

I'm not on XP but Win 7 (would I else post in this forum?).

kegobeer said:

Second - how have you configured your workgroup?

I haven't configured much. When installing and naming my two computers I accepted the default workgroup name "WORKGROUP" for both, that's it.

kegobeer said:

Third - do you have any firewall apps running?

Yes, Windows 7 built-in firewall.

M.

kegobeer said:

If both computers have the same user id/password, both are part of the same workgroup, and both are configured to be part of the "home" network, then you should never be prompted to provide any login information when you access a share. ...

(Sigh...) Yes, I read that "theory" elsewhere, too, but in fact - even though *all* the listed conditions are met - that's not the case here!

kegobeer said:

... Can you explain what shares you've set up and what permissions you've given them?

I have defined several shares to misc. directories, one to C (i.e. the drive's root), another to a folder C:\Download (where I keep all kind of stuff that I downloaded from the net) and another one to C:\Users\mmo (i.e. my home directory).

Share-permissions on all these are set to grant user mmo (i.e. myself) all permissions (i.e. Full, Change and Read).

M.

Is there any chance that the user account on one of the machines was renamed? It is possible (depending how it was done) that renaming an account only changes the display name and not the actual account name. If this is the case you may not actually be using the same account on both machines.