What could be the reason prevent win7 from accessing router's USB HDD

HI, All

The issue was really puzzled me. My WD portable HDD (1.5T) was attached to an USB port of my Asus RT-N66U router, Samba file sharing is enabled using the same workgroup name.

I had 2 computers, one is WinXP desktop, one is Lenovo T500 (Win7 64bits Pro) laptop. There are 2 VMs (WinXP and Win7 Ultimate 32bits) were installed and hosted by Win7 64bits Pro. All these computers were connecting to this router under same subnet 192.168.1.x.

My WinXP desktop computer can access the WD drive via \\192.168.1.1 without issue, My VM (WinXP) can acccss the drive without issue too (via \\192.168.1.1).

The odd thing is my Win7 64bits Pro that hosts the VMs can't access the hdd, typing \\192.1681.1, I got 'Window cannot access \\192.168.1.1, Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network. ....', but I can ping 192.168.1.1 with no problem.

try another Win7 VM, it can't access the HDD either, got the same error message.

so all Win7s can NOT access the network HDD. while all WinXPs can access it without any issue. so what could be the reason that prevent Win7 from accessing router's USB HDD?

Thanks.

William

Got it working: the Workstation service need to be turned on.