Windows 7 - W7, shared folder credential problem

Hello,

I've tried searching for this problem on the forums (and everywhere else) but I cant find anything. I'm either not using the right search keywords or this has not been posted yet.

The problem is simple but is driving me bonkers.

I have a laptop with Windows 7 on it and I cannot get it to connect to my Windows 2003 server like old versions of windows used to. Before whenever I typed \\servername in explorer, I would get a popup asking for user and password to connect to the server. Now when I type the server in exploerer, I get no prompt for credentials, Windows 7 seems to automatically log onto the server with some default/guest user with limited priviledges of course. Needless to say I cannot access and use files at an admin level so working on the server files (shared folders) is almost impossible from my laptop now.

I've done a few things that gave no result.

-I've added the \\servername and server\user in windows credentials in credential manager
-I've removed any and all credentials in credential manager
-I've removed my laptop from homegroups, and swtiched from home network type to office network type.
-I've gone into advanced sharing options and moved the check mark to 'use passwords and user accounts' from the homegroups option.

There is no visible credential in the vault, I cannot find any option to connect to the server with different credentials anywhere in the UI. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: Forgot to add:

Laptop, Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Servrer, Windows 2003 Sever R2 Enterprise Edition Service Pack 1 (this is x86 i believe)

Hi, welcome.

The reason you aren't getting asked for credentials is because you created a user name with the same password on both machines involved. You're actually connecting and all is well.

Set up shared folder(s) on the remote machine or map drives like this:

\\machine name\C$ <<< for C drive

or

\\ip address\D$ << for D drive

etc..

Thanks torrentg

I actually got things to work after a few hours of driving myself nuts.

You are right, since the username and pass on both computers match Windows 7 logged on automatically in the admin user. However, the behavior I got was not that of the admin user as I could not change files I should have access to.

I had a few services disabled. Their descriptions were far far away from networking and file sharing related, but it seems that having them disabled, prevented me from actually accessing the files with full permissions. Since i turned a BUNCH of them back on, I dont know what exact services they were, but they were not listed in the dependencies of any homegroup/server/rpc/netlogon etc networking services.

Having these services disabled also prevented me from creating homegroups (or starting the homegroup services) while I was trying to figure things out.

I went ahead an toggled most of the default services back on, and things work as they should. No password is asked to logon to the server and I log in as the same user/pass as the local machine.

Quick question though, what if I want to log on as a different user? Is there not an option to log in with different credentials?

Yes, you can log on with different credentials when mapping a drive and even set Windows to remember them upon a reboot, with or without automatically connecting too.

You're welcome.

Screenshot from Windows Explorer's map network drive button:

Just one note of clarification - The act of setting the network type to Work will prevent the creation of homegroups, and homegroups are only available for Windows 7 to Windows 7 sharing