Please Help - I have networked my laptop to my pc and can only open files from pc in read only

[Candace Reed]

My personal computer is running Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Service
Pack 2. My laptop is running Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002
Service Pack 2. I have networked my two computers via a wireless router. I
can open my laptop files (All Office 2003 programs) on my personal computer
and make changes to them and save them back to my laptop. When I open my
personal computer files on my laptop (All Office 2003 programs), they open
as read only and I cannot make changes to them and save them back onto my
personal computer. Please help me solve this problem as I cannot make
changes to my children's projects and save it back on their computer so they
can print it.

Thank you.

 

[Candace Reed]

Thank you for your help. I have already tried what you have suggested on
both my pc and my laptop. Both are checked off to allow network users to
change my files. Also when I access the pc from my laptop and if I right
click on the file I want to open and look under properties, under
attributes, neither read-only or hidden are checked off and yet when I open
the file on my laptop, it only opens in read-only and will not let me make
changes and save it to the pc. I don't understand why.

 

[Guest]

Hmm. That complicates things. There are three categories of problems that can
cause this. One is the permissions on the file or on the share. The wizard is
supposed to set those properly though. The second is that some other user or
process has the file open already. The third is an outright bug.

Dealing with them in reverse order; there are no unfixed bugs that would
cause this that I am aware of. There were a few, but they were all fixed.

There could be a user that has the file open, but I expect that you would
know about that, right? Does this happen on all files? If you go create a
brand new Word doc in the shared directory on the kids computer, close Word,
and then go open it from the laptop does it exhibit the same problem as all
the others? If so, someone holding the file open is not the problem.

That leaves us with the first problem, which is permissions related. Those
are a bit tricky to troubleshoot because most of the tools you would use to
do so are removed in XP Home if I recall correctly (I do not actually have
any installations of XP Home). If you feel adventurous, understand at least a
little about command prompts, and feel like installing a tool on the
computer, we can work around that. To be honest though, it may be easier to
go buy yourself a USB flash drive, copy the documents onto that on the kids
machine, and sneaker-net them over to the laptop for editing.

One thing to try is to look and see if you can see the permissions on the
share. Open the "Shared Folders" management interface. You can do that with
Start:Run... or from a command prompt (Start:All Programs:Accessories) by
typing fsmgmt.msc. I know that interface is simplified on XP Home, but how
much I do not know. Find the share you are accessing, right click it and
select properties. If you see the "Share Permissions" and "Security" tabs,
all hope is not lost. Reply with what those have to say. Click each user or
group and tell us what permissions they have there.

Even if you do not get those tabs I would try recreating the share to see if
that helps. To do that click the "Shares" node in the left hand pane and
select New File Share... Walk through the wizard. It should be relatively
self explanatory. On the screen for permissions, if Home Edition has one,
click Customize permissions, then click the Custom... button and make sure
that you have Everyone:Full Control on the share. After you finish the wizard
return to the laptop and try accessing the files again and see if that works.