Help, Share Desktop and Folders

[Ben]

My wife has a new computer with Vista Premium and has need to share folders
and her Desktop with her laptop which is running XP Pro.

This was no problem with her old XP desktop, but bad news with her new Vista
machine.

How can I sit up sharing on the Vista that will solve her problems and relieve
a few tensions?

Thanks,

Ben

 

[Malke]

My wife has a new computer with Vista Premium and has need to share
folders and her Desktop with her laptop which is running XP Pro.

This was no problem with her old XP desktop, but bad news with her new
Vista machine.

Here are general network troubleshooting steps. Not everything may be
applicable to your situation, so just take the bits that are. It may look
daunting, but if you follow the steps at the links and suggestions below
systematically and calmly, you will have no difficulty in setting up your
sharing.

Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall; or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls
such as the built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3)
not having identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines;
4) trying to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

For XP and Windows 2003 Server, MVP Hans-Georg Michna has an excellent small
network troubleshooter. It may also be useful with Vista.

http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm

Here are some general networking tips for home/small networks:

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this
will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a
third-party firewall or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm
Protection" (like Norton 2006/07) which acts as a firewall, then you're
fine. With third-party firewalls, I usually configure the LAN allowance
with an IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you
would substitute your correct subnet. Do not run more than one firewall.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. If you wish a machine to boot
directly to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for
convenience, you can do this. The instructions at this link work for both
XP and Vista:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center:

1. If you need Pro's ability to set fine-grained permissions, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab) and create identical user
accounts/passwords on all computers.

2. If you don't care about using Pro's advanced features, leave the Simple
File Sharing enabled. Simple File Sharing means that Guest (network) is
enabled. This means that anyone without a user account on the target system
can use its resources. This is a security hole but only you can decide if
it matters in your situation.

Malke

 

[Ben]

Here are general network troubleshooting steps. Not everything may be
applicable to your situation, so just take the bits that are. It may look
daunting, but if you follow the steps at the links and suggestions below
systematically and calmly, you will have no difficulty in setting up your
sharing.

Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall; or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls
such as the built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3)
not having identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines;
4) trying to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

For XP and Windows 2003 Server, MVP Hans-Georg Michna has an excellent small
network troubleshooter. It may also be useful with Vista.

http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm

Here are some general networking tips for home/small networks:

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this
will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a
third-party firewall or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm
Protection" (like Norton 2006/07) which acts as a firewall, then you're
fine. With third-party firewalls, I usually configure the LAN allowance
with an IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you
would substitute your correct subnet. Do not run more than one firewall.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. If you wish a machine to boot
directly to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for
convenience, you can do this. The instructions at this link work for both
XP and Vista:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center:

1. If you need Pro's ability to set fine-grained permissions, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab) and create identical user
accounts/passwords on all computers.

2. If you don't care about using Pro's advanced features, leave the Simple
File Sharing enabled. Simple File Sharing means that Guest (network) is
enabled. This means that anyone without a user account on the target system
can use its resources. This is a security hole but only you can decide if
it matters in your situation.

Malke

Thanks, will give it a try...

Ben

 

[Don Harvey]

Ben,

When I got this new machine with Vista Premium I went thru a lot of grief
trying to get it to network with my XP Laptop. Someone on my programmers
newsgroup suggested I get Network Magic.

It cost I think about 30 bucks for a 3 computer network setup. It solved my
network headache in maybe 5 minutes. You might check out their demo. I
think the link is www.networkmagic.com

Don

 

[Ben]

Here are general network troubleshooting steps. Not everything may be
applicable to your situation, so just take the bits that are. It may look
daunting, but if you follow the steps at the links and suggestions below
systematically and calmly, you will have no difficulty in setting up your
sharing.

Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

Thanks,

This has solved some of the sharing problems, only one major remaining (major
to me anyway)

We would like to share the Vista Desktop.

I thought I might do this through Documents and settings but it won't le me
have access to it.

I'm on her machine and she is active, and is administrator.

Should give her access to everything, I would think.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, again,

Ben

 

[Malke]

Thanks,

This has solved some of the sharing problems, only one major remaining
(major to me anyway)

We would like to share the Vista Desktop.

I thought I might do this through Documents and settings but it won't le
me have access to it.

I'm on her machine and she is active, and is administrator.

Should give her access to everything, I would think.

You are getting the "access denied" because there is no real Documents and
Settings location in Vista. It doesn't exist. What you see is a virtual
Documents and Settings - called a "junction" - that is there only for
backwards compatibility with older programs which expect that location to
exist.

The true location of the Desktop folder is
%systemdrive%\Users\your-user-account\Desktop [Documents, Downloads, Music,
etc.]

So navigate to that location and set your sharing accordingly.

Malke

 

[Ben]

Thanks,

This has solved some of the sharing problems, only one major remaining
(major to me anyway)

We would like to share the Vista Desktop.

I thought I might do this through Documents and settings but it won't le
me have access to it.

I'm on her machine and she is active, and is administrator.

Should give her access to everything, I would think.

You are getting the "access denied" because there is no real Documents and
Settings location in Vista. It doesn't exist. What you see is a virtual
Documents and Settings - called a "junction" - that is there only for
backwards compatibility with older programs which expect that location to
exist.

The true location of the Desktop folder is
%systemdrive%\Users\your-user-account\Desktop [Documents, Downloads, Music,
etc.]

So navigate to that location and set your sharing accordingly.

Malke

Thanks again,

Worked on my test machine, now to do it on her system!

Thanks again,

Ben

 

[Ben]

Thanks,

This has solved some of the sharing problems, only one major remaining
(major to me anyway)

We would like to share the Vista Desktop.

I thought I might do this through Documents and settings but it won't le
me have access to it.

I'm on her machine and she is active, and is administrator.

Should give her access to everything, I would think.

You are getting the "access denied" because there is no real Documents and
Settings location in Vista. It doesn't exist. What you see is a virtual
Documents and Settings - called a "junction" - that is there only for
backwards compatibility with older programs which expect that location to
exist.

The true location of the Desktop folder is
%systemdrive%\Users\your-user-account\Desktop [Documents, Downloads, Music,
etc.]

So navigate to that location and set your sharing accordingly.

Malke

Ok, but not all working.... Desktop is accessible, but the folders on the
Desktop weren't. The appeared empty... However, if I enables share on each
folder on the desktop, it works ok.

Great Progress's!

Thanks again...