Problems sharing a folder on a domain

[Alain Dekker]

Hi,

I've been trying to find the answer to this on the web, but without success.
I have two computers on a network. Both are running Windows XP, SP2.

I have the "Shared Folder" on each computer which I can see under "My
Network Places/Entire Network/Microsoft Windows
Network/Workgroup/WORKGROUP_NAME/COMP_NAME". I'll call the computers A and
B.

From computer A, I can navigate to B\Shared Folder without a program, copy
files, delete files, you name it.

From computer B, I can see the folder A\Shared Folder, but when I try and
open it, I get the message:

<FOLDER> 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.

I can ping the computer A from B by IP address and computer name.

Now I have checked the permissions of the share on each and they both look
identical, except that the dialog looks different on each (tried to attach,
but says doc too large). Description of differences:
Comp A: 3 tabs, General, Sharing, Security. Sharing tab has radio buttons
"Do not share/Share this folder" with Permissions, Caching and New Share
buttons.
Comp B: 2 tabs, General, Sharing. Sharing tab has two group boxes called
"Local sharing and security" and "Network sharing and security". Latter has
two tick boxes "Share this folder on the network" (ticked) and "Allow
network users to change my files" (also ticked).

Note: the shared folder works on comp B (as in I can play with it from comp
A). Why are they different? The permissions have been set up, as far as I
can see, correctly.

I then checked my Windows Firewall settings on each computer and they both
look like they allow Fil and Printer Sharing. Finally, I checked the Shared
Folders under Computer Management and again it looks the same across both
computers.

Questions:
1) Why do the folder properties look so different on the two PCs running the
same version of Windows?
2) Why is it working on one PC and not the other?

Thanks,
Alain

 

[Stephen Whitlock]

On computer B you probably have simple file sharing selected (from and
windows explorer window click "Tools" "Folder Options" "View" scroll
down to the bottom) whereas with computer A you do not. Therefore when
trying to access the share on computer A it is looking for a username
and password to be supplied which is the username and password that you
used to log on to computer B with which it does not find in its
permissions list and therefore denies access.
On computer A go to the properties of the shared folder and make sure
that "everyone" has access to the file from the permissions on both the
Sharing and the Security tab. This should sort your problem, however it
will allow anyone access to that folder who has access to your network.
With Simple File Sharing enabled the Security tab on folder/file
properties is not there.

 

[RalfG]

Quibble... Workgroup, not Domain. Different scenarios, different possible
answers.

NetBios forced "enabled" in TCP/IP settings on both computers?

 

[Alain Dekker]

On the machine that works, the WINS > NetBIOS setting is "Default: Use
NetBIOS setting from the DHCP server, etc". Will check the other machine
(thats not working) in a moment.

Thanks for the tips and replies,
Alain