Mixed Win7 / WinXP network issues (again)

Kriemer:
I have found that in a lot of instances the problems, issues, and confusion often stems from users, coming from and OS installed on a fat32 volume and moving to an OS that uses NTFS. In fat32, there was no security tab to fool with and no ntfs permissions to cause problems, however; now, it's a different story and understanding this, is often the first step in resolving such issues. First, share permission, they impact users coming at you from across the network and the setting here decide how much success they will or will not have. Second, ntfs permissions, these are for local file and folder access and can be adjusted, often very specifically to impact a particular user or group of users. Third and maybe most important, when ever you have sharing on an ntfs volume both share permissions and ntfs permissions come into play and for lack of a better explaination are more or less combined. And always, always, always the most restrictive permissions prevails. This has resulted in a lot of people just throwing the everyone group in both places and giving that group full control. Not generally accepted as a best practice for networking security, but it seems to get most over the hump. You need to understand that users are not exactly stand alone entities, they always belong to groups, and since permissions are applied to groups as well as users and again the most restrictive applies, then a user can often be denied access based on his membership in multiple groups, one group being more restricted than the other. I explained that so you understand that it becomes even more confusing when you realize that there is not only one group called users, but another group called authenticated users, and for the sake of sanity I advise you to handle them exactly the same granting the same permissions so as not to confound a user who may be a member of both groups. I hope this helps, at least a little bit, and I haven't confused you even further. You may try looking at this and see if it makes sense to you Combining Shared Folder and NTFS Permissions

My position is unchanged, it shouldn't be this difficult. A mixed network should not be more difficult to configure than a WinXP or Win7 network. Clearly there is something missing given the number of question on this subject. MS must recognize that their general audience are not interested in the technical detail of configuration as they have evidently invested significant effort in simplifying Win7 / Win7 networking.

That said, I am now able to network MyDocuments from Win7 to the WinXP machines and vice verse. I still can't connect to a secondary NTFS formatted drive on my Win7 machine from other WinXP computers on my network. I can see the drive, but I continue to fail on a permissions warning. Everything I can see is set to allow.

This is a Virtual Win7 installation, but I am confident this is not the issue.

Doh!!.

Thanks

k

kriemer;487402[B said:

]My position is unchanged, it shouldn't be this difficult. A mixed network should not be more difficult to configure than a WinXP or Win7 network.[/B] Clearly there is something missing given the number of question on this subject. MS must recognize that their general audience are not interested in the technical detail of configuration as they have evidently invested significant effort in simplifying Win7 / Win7 networking.

That said, I am now able to network MyDocuments from Win7 to the WinXP machines and vice verse. I still can't connect to a secondary NTFS formatted drive on my Win7 machine from other WinXP computers on my network.

This is a Virtual Win7 installation, but I am confident this is not the issue.

Doh!!.

Thanks

k

Couldn't agree more, but yet to many it does seem to be more difficult. That's what keeps us all so busy. In so far as the secondary NTFS formatted drive goes.
Is the whole drive shared at the root, or just multiple folders. Carefull inspect the permissions on each share both share permissions and ntfs under the security tab for each share or at the root and make sure that where ever you actually set the share that it cascades down to child objects and is not inheriting more restrictive permissions from the parent object