Can't Share Users Files After Leaving Homegroup

Hello all,

I have been scratching my head for a few days on this and I'm tapped out and need help.

So here's the setup. File sharing was originally working fine (using traditional method). Then I thought I would try Homegroups. That turned out to not work for me because of many reasons, but the main one was Linux/samba access stopped working. So I thought I could simply leave the Homegroup on all of the PC's and go back to legacy file sharing but I have not gotten that to work.

I need to be able to see \\<host>\\Users\<username> (for only one username, I understand user A cannot see user B's files) across all of the PC's, but it's not working. One footnote: It only works for Administrator, and Public is also visible by all users. But the users cannot access their individual data on remote machines (Users dir). The exact error is not very helpful (Windows cannot access, check spelling).

Here's some highlights of what I've seen, what I've tried, and more details about my setup that might be helpful in this troubleshooting:

• All PC's are Win7 Pro SP1 64 bit (not counting samba machines)
• Firewall is disabled and not an issue
  
  • In general the firewall is not an issue because Administrator can see their files, and Public works for everyone
  
  
• Disabled Homegroup services (Homegroup Provider and Homegroup Listener) - services were stopped and set to "Disable" permanently - rebooted after change
• The users within my network are either members of Users or Power Users, intentionally not members of Administrators group
  
• No DC - This is strictly a workgroup setup - workgroup names match across all PC's
  
• "Use Sharing Wizard" is checked in Windows Explorer -> Organize -> Folder and Search Options -> View
• Network type is "Home" in Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center
• Network advanced property settings (Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change advanced sharing settings:
  
  • Home or Work
    
    • Turn on network discovery
    • Turn on file and printer sharing
    • Turn on sharing so anyone with network access can read and write files in the Public folders
    • Media streaming is off (not sure what happened here - it was on yesterday and I did not change it)
    • Use 128-bit encryption to help protect file sharing connections (recommended)
    • Turn off password protected sharing
    • Allow Windows to manage
      
      • Tried "Use user accounts and passwords..." as well, did not work
      
      
    
    
  
  

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. I've hit a wall. Thanks so much!

Hello AlwaysDepends,

You will want to enable all services that were turned off. There is absolutely no reason to turn off any of the Windows services and it will only lead to problems later on. Also, do not turn off the Windows firewall, it does not prevent sharing and is required.

I should also point out that pretty much any third party anti virus software will cause problems with sharing. You can either disable security, uninstall the security completely using the uninstall tool or configure it to work with Windows sharing.

You never mentioned the most important thing, is the main Users folder shared out though the sharing tab?

With Windows 7 besides sharing the User folder you also need to share the C:>Users>User name folders in order for them to be shared. This is sharing 101 but it's important to check these basic steps first because they are easy to miss.

Hi chev65,

Regarding the Homegroup services being disabled by me - every web site I visited beyond this one said to disable Homegroup services if you have left the Homegroup and don't care to use it again, which describes my situation. If disabling services is such a travesty then Microsoft shouldn't have provided the ability to disable them. I don't agree with your reply on services.

Secondly, your reply about third party virus protection is also not completely accurate. I assume you're implying the only worthy virus scan suite is Microsoft Security Essentials. If you have done any research on that within the past year, you will notice that it has gotten lower and lower reviews, and even MS employees themselves have admitted that it's not the best option out there. Also as I previously mentioned, sharing was fine using third party firewall and third party virus protection until I joined the Homegroup. Leaving the Homegroup has been a pain but the rest of the setup has been static. So therefore sharing was not an issue for me using a third party virus scan and third party firewall. The firewall is also not an issue because Public folders are visible, and Administrator sharing works, using a third party firewall and third party virus scan.

This is most likely going to be a rogue setting somewhere, or an access rights issue.

To answer your other questions:

• I don't think I'd be able to see the Public folder across PC's if Users wasn't shared, but I apologize for assuming that. Yes, the Users folder is shared.
• Yes, I have shared the Users\<username> folders as well. When I click on them, they even indicate they are shared in the status bar but it's not visible for some reason. I tried sharing them using both Administrator accounts and the user's individual accounts, both to no avail.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

always depends said:

Hi chev65,

Regarding the Homegroup services being disabled by me - every web site I visited beyond this one said to disable Homegroup services if you have left the Homegroup and don't care to use it again, which describes my situation. If disabling services is such a travesty then Microsoft shouldn't have provided the ability to disable them. I don't agree with your reply on services.

Secondly, your reply about third party virus protection is also not completely accurate. I assume you're implying the only worthy virus scan suite is Microsoft Security Essentials. If you have done any research on that within the past year, you will notice that it has gotten lower and lower reviews, and even MS employees themselves have admitted that it's not the best option out there. Also as I previously mentioned, sharing was fine using third party firewall and third party virus protection until I joined the Homegroup. Leaving the Homegroup has been a pain but the rest of the setup has been static. So therefore sharing was not an issue for me using a third party virus scan and third party firewall. The firewall is also not an issue because Public folders are visible, and Administrator sharing works, using a third party firewall and third party virus scan.

This is most likely going to be a rogue setting somewhere, or an access rights issue.

To answer your other questions:

• I don't think I'd be able to see the Public folder across PC's if Users wasn't shared, but I apologize for assuming that. Yes, the Users folder is shared.
• Yes, I have shared the Users\<username> folders as well. When I click on them, they even indicate they are shared in the status bar but it's not visible for some reason. I tried sharing them using both Administrator accounts and the user's individual accounts, both to no avail.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

There are no rogue settings that I'm aware of, it's probably something simple that is being overlooked, maybe the time/date settings out of sync, despite what you may think third party A/V's are famous for causing problems like this and do so on a daily basis, I'd hate to waste my time here when a third party A/V is involved, been there, done that, way too many times. Good luck on your endeavor.

Fair enough. I will ask questions.

If the firewall is an issue, I would not expect Public to be visible for everyone, and I also would not expect the sharing to work for only the Administrator account. Is that correct? If it is, I think we can rule the firewall out of the discussion completely.

I disabled the Bitdefender Total Security firewall and it did not resolve the problem. Should I have worn out my welcome here, I will return to post the answer should others find it useful. Thanks.

I tried something new. I tried from the command line and got the following result:

C:\Users\miked>dir \\lombardo\users\miked
Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer.

I don't know where to look to fix this, but I'll start poking around the security policies, and continue Googling.