File sharing problems on different OS's

I am the admin on all machines

I am using XP, Vista and Win 7 on my home network and have set up a WORKGROUP network, it all works and I can see each machine on my seperate Machines ..But I have a problem with sharing files

Every time I go to get a file from any machine a User account dialog box pops up requests a user name and pass word??? How can I remove this problem from all machines please? do I need to setup account on all machines allowing access to each other or is there a simpler way? If I need to set up unrestricted accounts how do I do it?

Funny thing is I can get some files from one machines then it may request a Username & password??? strange

any help from any Guru would be very much appreciated indeed.

cistec

Cistec said:

I am the admin on all machines

I am using XP, Vista and Win 7 on my home network and have set up a WORKGROUP network, it all works and I can see each machine on my seperate Machines ..But I have a problem with sharing files

Every time I go to get a file from any machine a User account dialog box pops up requests a user name and pass word??? How can I remove this problem from all machines please? do I need to setup account on all machines allowing access to each other or is there a simpler way? If I need to set up unrestricted accounts how do I do it?

Funny thing is I can get some files from one machines then it may request a Username & password??? strange

any help from any Guru would be very much appreciated indeed.

cistec

Ok... you have a number of choices here and I'm very sure everyone will come up with a ton of usefull ideas. Here's what I do...

On small lans where security is simply not an issue, I have all machines log into accounts with identical usernames and passwords... Since the current account name and password are used for first try authentication the whole thing acts like one big open playspace. This is mostly useful for situations where you are networking a desktop PC with an HTPC and maybe a couple of laptops and trust everyone to behave honoroably.

Things get a little more complex when security and privacy issues begin to creep into the picture. I generally create a common account... ie the same account and password on all computers and unique usernames and passwords for their working accounts. Nobody ever logs directly into the common account. In this scenario when accessing their own computers everything is wide open to them but the network requires user/pass authentication to access. Each user will have to enter the common account user/pass but that allows them access to the entire network. They should only have to do this once as they can simply check the remember me box and be done with it.

Ok... for being able to do some things and not others... This is most likely a matter of share permissions.

Most Microsoft OSs stupidly hide these from "joe average"... In win7 you would open Folder Options -> View and turn off the "Use sharing wizard" box. In XP you go to the same dialog and turn off "Simple file sharing" ... both will requre reboots to fully activate.

Now on each shared folder, right click and select the sharing option from the menu. (You can also use Properties and then click on the sharing tab). In the sharing dialog you will find buttons for "Permission" and "Caching"... Note: Do not mess with the user permissions, stay on the sharing tab.

In the Permissions box you can list users and set their permissions by checking the boxes at the bottom of the dialog...

In the first scenario where everyone logs into the same username/password you can simply set "Everyone" to full access and they can do whatever they want in the shares.

In the second scenario where there is a common account you can enter that account name and set it's premissions as you choose. But you can also override these default behaviors for certain users by entering their names explicitly and giving them extra permissions (eg. Everyone is read only, FRED has full control)... Please note you can "down permission" by this method. A user always gets the highest available permissions.

The Caching setup is pretty simple... I usually turn it off as this also prevents users from building stores of "offline files" that may someday get dumped back into the network causing file-version problems.


Hope this helps....

Cistec said:

I am the admin on all machines

I am using XP, Vista and Win 7 on my home network and have set up a WORKGROUP network, it all works and I can see each machine on my seperate Machines ..But I have a problem with sharing files

Every time I go to get a file from any machine a User account dialog box pops up requests a user name and pass word??? How can I remove this problem from all machines please? do I need to setup account on all machines allowing access to each other or is there a simpler way? If I need to set up unrestricted accounts how do I do it?

Funny thing is I can get some files from one machines then it may request a Username & password??? strange

any help from any Guru would be very much appreciated indeed.

cistec

This problem has come up many times in the past and there can be a couple of different things causing it.

It sometimes has to do with the time/date settings on one or more of the machines being out of sync with the others. You should also check the time/date in bios because that will also cause this problem to occur.

Other times the guest account in security properties needs to be enabled to shut off those password prompts, try this on the Win 7 machine.

Goto... Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Local Policies > Security Options

Scroll down to... Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts

Select... Guest only and not Classic. I checked on XP machine and Guest seems to be the default so there seems to be a mismatch of security policies.

Source: File sharing password problem with XP - solved for me

brianzion said:

in my files i go to properties and unblock and also select share all:)

That only works for homegroup and public folder....

You can't use Homegroup for mixed OSs. When sharing with XP you need to set up a Workgroup and downgrade Win7 to XP standards for it to work...

The OP has all that done as all the machines can see one another... it's most likely a permissions issue now, and that has to be resolved on a folder by folder basis.

OK...I've been working on getting my Win7 machine and my XP machine to see each other properly for 3 days now.
I have finally found a solution that has worked in my case, after having tried so many different things suggested by others on this forum and many other forums.
Here are the steps that I found that worked, and I have verified them several times to make sure they work.

1- Make sure both computers are in the same workgroup (that is a given).

2- Enable Guest accounts on both computers and remove any passwords associated with them.

3- On the XP machine click on My Computer, Tools, Folder Options, View, and make sure "Use simple file sharing" is turned ON.

4- On the Win7 machine click on Computer, Tools, Folder Options, View, and make sure "Use Sharing Wizard" is turned OFF.

5- On the XP machine (has to be the PRO version), go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy, Security Settings, Local Policies, Security Options, and double click on "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts," and change the settings to "Guest only - local users authenticate as Guest."

6- On the Win7 machine (has to a version that supports this), go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy, Security Settings, Local Policies, Security Options, and double click on "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts," and change the settings to "Guest only - local users authenticate as Guest."

7- Reboot both machines and you should be able to share files & folders and printers.