vista is invisible to other pcs

to make it simple i have a home network with 2 pcs wired and sometimes 1 or 2 laptops wifi. All pcs used to share and be seen by each other. I guess i must have changed someting but dont know what. the first pc is a vista machine (we'll call pc-V) the second is an xp pc (pc-X). the 2 laptops that visit some are vista machines. All can accessed the web. pc-V can see and read or write to any other pc(vista or xp). Other pcs can see and assess each other. No other pc can assess pc-V. It give a "you do not have permission" error. How do I reset the network stuff on pc-V so others can view it. Its now showing network 4 in control panel ( where 1-3 went , i dont know). There is no passwords on anything as I live out in the country with nearest neighbor a half mile away.

Thanks for reading, any advice or help is appreciated.

 

Had to go through and attempt to figure out what you are stating in your post, due to it does not match your title. In simple terms, can all machines on the LAN see each other shared drive or not? Just need a yes or no answer, nothing more, then can go from there.

I can tell you what the answer is to your problem. Start by looking at a firewall issue.

 

the other pcs sees <name>-pc , but cannot open it to see shared folders. The "permission denied" error pops up. I can build pcs all day long, but weak in the networking area. No pc cannot access or even see the shared folders on pc-V, just see that a pc is there.

 

If all computers can see each other on the network, but unable to access a shared folder, check for proper username & password is the same on all machines, otherwise you have to use "guest" to access the shares across the network. Making changes to the shared permissions can screw things up also, along with the firewall software, whether it is the Windows firewall, or a third party software.

 

For me to get Vista to do any networking at all I had to use Microsoft's Live Mesh. I went on forums like this one and tried tons of "fixes" and nothing worked. Eventually someone told me that since I have Home Basic it just doesn't do that. Then I stumbled upon the whole Mesh thing. It's part of their Live bundle, and it's free. I installed Windows Live, went through the usual hoops, linked it to my hotmail acct and from then on out I've been in business. But like you I'm not a networking kind of guy and may have missed something.

 

You do not have to do anything, other than make sure that all machines have the same username and password, in the same work group, and are set as safe in the firewall. If you have to do something odd, like use Live mesh, whatever some fix is suggested, you did something wrong.

Vista Home basic will work with everything from 7 downwards. Any info you need is available at microsoft.com, not some forum that suggested to use Live mesh, or someone who said that you could not network with Home basic, whatever OS.

 

The version of Windows is Vista Ultimate 32-bit. All machines shared in the past, so i know it will work. I must have changed something unknowingly, a setting or some update or program install. All other pcs see and share with each other. Just cant assess the Vista machine. The Vista machine can see and access all others. No passwords are used and the workgroup is the same on all machines "WORKGROUP", even on the xp machine. The shared folders on all pcs are set permissions for everyone with full control

 

Yep, I was told that repeatedly and never was able to get it to work. Probably user error but it really shouldn't have been that hard. I even had one computer hardwired through the Vista computer to access the internet and still it wouldn't be able to share anything between the two. I've since upgraded to Windows 7 and it all just pretty much worked the way everyone tells me it's supposed to work. Maybe it had something to do with UAC, I don't know. I had UAC turned off. And nobody suggested Live Mesh, I just stumbled onto that. And the info on Live Mesh is on Microsoft.com since it's a Microsoft service. I don't see the problem here, it's just a different approach.

 

ok as simply as i can put this. //ray-pc is a vista computer. //home-pc is an xp comp. on ray-pc(vista) i can go to network, see both computers and have full access to read and write to all shared folders on both computers. on home-pc(xp) i can go to network, see both computers and only have access to the shared folders on the xp machine. If i try to open or explore ray-pc from the home-pc it says "\\ray-pc is not accessable. you may not have permission to access this network resource. check with you administrator to see if you have access permission." All shared folders on both computers are set to everyone , full control. there are no passwords on any folders or logins. Same workgroup on both machines.

 

I used to be able to access and share equally in the past. i think this might have started after i installed vmware on the vista machine(to tinker with but didnt like), which i since have uninstalled.

 

vmware can make changes, especially with the firewall. Check the services.msc to see if Network discovery, ssdp, upnp, etc are running.

See the following http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...g/thread/DAE336F3-3860-407B-A4EE-AE1F7D4199A6
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-netbeui/ec2504e8-9899-4854-bc28-5b5f459a5f4a
http://www.ezlan.net

 

ok , if you like a story with a twist - read on

I still dont know what was causing my problem or how to fix it singularly. But after hours of surfing and reading i saw a post mentioning something about TweakUI for Vista. Windows Ultimate Tweaker it was called. I downloaded that, made a restore point, and used the reset to default button.

Now i can see and access some folders , but still not all that i share. this is what ive learned thru trial and error.

i can open the public folders. I made new shares on some folders and can see them. but a couple of old folders still says access denied. it works out to this. if it is a new share setup and I type in the group "everyone", it takes a few minutes to publish the shared folder, and it works fine. If the group "everyone" is already there, it will not publish or work. changing permisions, removing group from share list and re-adding it stills does not work.

any thoughts on this new developement?

to get even more interesting- H drive is an externial drive hooked to vista and it shares accross network.
M drive in a hard drive in a drive dock (connected USB), it will not share. It was a drive previously listed in the shared folders. but a folder on M drive newly shared works fine.
N drive is an internal sata hdd and wont share, but a folder on it will.

 

Well , I think I have fixed it.

If you want to know what I found, here it is. After more surfing and searching, I found something about security settings on files and folders. With a little investigating it seems all the working shared folders had "everyone" listed on the security tabs under properties of the folder. and you guessed it, the folders that denied access didnt have "everyone" listed under security. Even though "everyone" was set in permissions to full control, it didnt work on folders that didnt have "everyone" on the security tab.

So I added "everyone" to the list on the security tab, it went thru and set security on every file in the folder to include "everyone". It worked after that , I can assess the folders that i couldn't before. even from the xp computer.

Note: the folders that I was setting security for were entire drives of 2 tb. It will take a few mins with a lot of files. 1 drive had 86,512 files the other 435,485 files. It took about 10 min for the latter.

Thanks for all the replies and advice. I think and hope I have the problem fixed.

 

Glad you got it working. Just don't talk about it at work, or your bosses will have you start doing IT work, if a small shop. It just takes time to fix things, especially when it comes to permissions. Just remember what you did, if you ever have to pull a drive out of one machine, and need to put in another to pull files off of it. Same sequence.