SQL Brad said:
I consider myself to be a pretty good techy expert....however this is just
killing me....what did Windows do to make this difficult? I have a Win XP
Pro machine, and a Win XP Home machine, I am trying to copy files from the
XP
Home TO the XP Pro...I have set up shared folders, my pcs' are on the same
network, 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.11 respectively. I have firewalls
turned
off, both are in the same Workgroup called KKBR...and neither one sees the
other computer on the network....what gives? I have Norton turned off as
well....thanks in advance.
Hi Brad,
I had a lot of trouble with this too, Steve Winograd had a good article
about file sharing that helped - see below -, but I still found that the
different way Home and XP show user account names was the problem. In Home,
you don't seem to see the full user account name, so you think you have
created identical accounts on each machine but you haven't.
I'm no expert on this by any means, but here's what I said at the time:
"Hi,
I've put this in with the original thread but suspect that it might be too
old a thread to be noticed, so here are my thanks and points raised. (I
also notice that Steve W has mentioned the 'userpasswords' method I
eventually discovered, in one of today's threads...). Here's my follow up:
Hi Steve Winograd,
First off, thanks very much for your xp_filesharing/ article, which has
cleared up a lot of the confusion I had over file sharing and permissions,
and I have, at last been able to suss my networking problem.
To recap: I have one laptop running XPHome and a pc running XPPro and am
networking them via a router.
Following the advice to set up identical accounts on each machine, I was
able to get myself linked up as required, but was still getting the second
user rejected by the pc (thanks very much for explaining the difference
between sharing permissions and NTFS permissions, as I had not noticed these
were two different sets of 'gatekeepers'!).
To get to the point: I discovered that when you change the name of an
account via User Accounts in XPHome's Control Panel, it ONLY changes the
'full name' of the account, which is NOT the one used by the security
settings. BUT because XPHome does not have a 'Local Users and Groups'
section in Computer Management, there is no straightforward way for Home
users to detect the problem! It has taken me all week to notice the
significance of various greyed out references to the old user name which I
had thought was changed, and to search for an equivalent of 'Local Users and
Groups'.
Eventually I tracked down references to use 'Run: control userpasswords2' in
XPHome, which at last lets one get at the REAL user name, which one can then
change as in the XPPro version. What a pain for Home users to be so
completely shafted by their misleading Control/User Accounts section. This
should come with a warning in caps that the account name cannot really be
changed from there!
Thus I think it would be very useful for you to amend your excellent 'WinXP
Pro File Sharing' piece, to add the note under the 'explore user accounts in
the raw' and 'Create User Groups' sections, that XPHome does not have the
'Local Users and Groups' section, and so to really be sure of the name of
your account you have to use 'controluserpasswords2', where you will also
see
what groups each user is a part of. I suspect that this may account for a
lot of other peoples' problems when trying to set up home networks.
Another point that you might like to include is a caveat about the default
setting of 'Use Simple File Sharing' and the way this is kept in a silly
place right at the bottom of the 'View' menu, as if it was just a simple
formatting option rather than a serious security setting with enormously
wide implications!
For example, when we got our pc, we had no idea that there were any such
things as 'security' tabs, as 'simple' file sharing deprives you of even a
greyed out hint of their existence. As a result, when our HP printer came
with permissions set for 'Administrators and Power Users' only, not even HP
could understand why mere 'Users' of our pc could not print (their help
staff had no idea the printers came set that way); and even when we had
heard about permissions, we could not find where on earth the permissions
could be set. It took months to suss that problem and all because of one
stupid tick box default setting effectively hiding much of the vital working
controls of the system! SFS should come with a loud 'do not use' warning!
Anyhow, hope this may help others with similar problems, and possibly help
you in your own advisory capacity.
Thanks once again,
S"
