Windows Vista prompts for network share password on every boot

[SlackerBoy]

I have an office with multple Vista Business machines installed. Each
computer has a share called SharedFiles. Each machine is setup with an
account called 'Shared' that is given access to this folder. When a user maps
this share from another computer, they use reconnect on login and login using
different user name (using the 'shared' account credentials). Typically only
one of the computers actually hosts the shared files, but they are all set up
identically. All of the other machines connect to the 'main' computer's
"SharedFiles" folder.

When the machine is rebooted, it comes up and says it can't reconnect to all
shares. When the customer clicks on the share, it prompts for credentials and
connects. It is annoying to have the error pop up, as well as having to enter
credentials each time to connect. I would appreciate any help provided.

These machines do have Norton Internet Security 2008 on them, which we have
disabled with no change to the problem.

 

[Jack \(MVP-Networking\).]

Hi
I am not totally clear about the Network make up, it seems that you have
peer to peer Network and you are trying to use it as a Real Business
Network.
May be it is an issue of using DHCP from a Router with No IP reservation,
may be Norton blocks some things even with it is Off (switching it Off does
not takes it totally out of the system), may be you exceed 10 connections.
You should consider getting a real server like Windows 2008 SBS.
http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/overview.aspx
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

 

[SlackerBoy]

Thanks Jack,

Unfortunately the office design was not under my control, I am just trying
to fix the problem. There are less than 10 computers in the office, and you
are correct, they are using peer-to-peer. They are connected via a broadband
router that assigns the IP address via DHCP.

Slackerboy