Home network WIN7 & XP: file and printer sharing problem

Hi guyc,

Do you have a Workgroup networking established? Please verify your current setup from this Microsoft Tutorial.
Sharing files and printers with different versions of Windows - Help & How-to - Microsoft Windows

For now, share the C Drive from both computers and give them Full permission. Are you the only one that need to access the 2 computers?

Can we try a work around?

From your XP computer, click on start and type \\Win7ComputerName\SharedDrive or folder then press enter and also replace the computer name with the Win 7 IP Address (just an example) - \\192.168.1.10\SharedDrive or folder then press enter. Were you able to access the shared folder/drive and modify the files?

No worries Guy, we'll be right here when you get back....

Hello 2xg

I tried but got exactly the same error message. The exact error message I receive is:

\\WIN7PC\C is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

Access is denied.

So I still can't share files. I wrote that I could access the files that are in the "Public"-folders. Now I see that even here here are problems: I have only complete access to my wife's (!) folder and subfolders; every other folder I can see but can't access it nor the subfolders (access is denied)!

I can have access to my DVD-drive (I only tested reading files on D: ).

Some history and some personal thoughts:

• My "My documents"-folder is still the same as I had on my Win95, Win98, WinME, Win2K, WinXP and Win7-pc's, but in time they only grew bigger in amount of files and subfolders. Maybe permissions have been changed in time due to migration to other Windows versions.
• If I remember correctly, when sharing folders in WinXP, WinXP changes every file in every subfolder of the shared folder (which sometimes took several minutes). I have never noticed WIN7 doing this?!
• When changing permissions, there are only 3 permissions to grant: full management (maybe this is not correct English, but on the Win7-pc I'm working with a Dutch Windows version), write and access. Is this normal?

My intuition says this could be involved into the problem.

One good thing, though: I could solve the printer sharing problem. First, I installed the WinXP printer driver on the XP-pc; afterwards I rerouted it from local printing to the shared printer on the WIN7-pc.

So, again, help wanted for file sharing! Thanks in advance!

Guy, Belgium

Hello there guyc, glad to see your printer sharing is solved... but for your drive folder sharing, can you try this temporarily?

1. Go to network and sharing center, advanced sharing settings, and turn off password protected sharing for now.


2. For the folders that you wish to share, can you change the security settings to allow everyone access by right clicking on the folder, selecting the security tab, and clicking on the edit button, selecting add, and in the dialog box type in Everyone and clicking okay... Notice everyone is now a username added to the groups...

For example i want to share my american shows to other pcs in the network thats on drive V



3. If you haven't already, disable Use Sharing Wizard by going to Folder Options, clicking on the View tab and deselecting the Use Sharing Wizard checkbox



4. Now right click on the folder to share, select the sharing tab, and click on Advanced Sharing, tick the Share this folder checkbox and click okay..



Your folder should now be shared to anyone on the network (Thats the only downside to this solution).. But they cannot modify any files in the folder and only read it, unless you change the permissions to full control for everyone in the previous advanced sharing dialogue box like this:-



Hope that helps!

EDIT:- Ensure both your PCs are in the same workgroup to make things simpler! Also, if you wish to hide the share so that only you can see it, add a $ symbol at the end of the share name in the Advanced Sharing dialogue box