Other computers on network won't connect to server share

[Jesusfrk611]

Here's my predicament... I have a system running Vista Business I am using as a file/print server for my home network. I just installed Vista, I used to be running Server 2008 (got tired of typing in the password all the time...). I'm pretty sure I had this same issue in Server 2008, though I got tired of it and uninstalled it before I looked into it. But I have 2 desktops and a laptop that need to be able to connect to the server, and they all find it fine on the network, and it even goes into the public shared folders and connects to the printer fine (have yet to test print, but it connected and installed). And my desktop will connect fine with the server via Remote Desktop. But I have a second set of drives on the server setup in hardware RAID1 that I want to share for my file sharing and backup purposes. It was always working fine with Windows XP awhile back and Server 2008 more recently using this setup (until yesterday with Server 2008). Now I try to connect to the shared folder on Server and it tells me I don't have permission... I've set and reset the permissions that I have known to work before and it's not working. I even tried setting up a share on the C drive of Server and it still doesn't want to connect with that. Being that it happened on both OSes would lead me to believe a problem with my desktop, but my other desktop is doing the exact same thing... I haven't touched any settings with my router before it stopped working. I can connect to shared folders on my desktop from the server.

Picture to show you what's going on (Right click>view image to see full size). Using remote desktop on my desktop to connect to server. On the server I have a shared folder open from my desktop. You can see I have the permissions set to full control (which is all I ever had to do before to my knowledge). Yet go over to my desktop and you can see the message that says I do no have permission...

What's going on...?

 

[jmacavali]

Have you set the permissions on both the "Sharing" and "Security" tabs? Seems to me that I remember having to do that sometime for something like this.....

 

[Jesusfrk611]

As far as I know, I have set everything to full permission in the sharing and security tabs. Would user account control block access to sharing? It's just weird I can do sharing of printers and public shared folders, but I can't make my own shared folder...

 

[jmacavali]

I know in Vista there is a whole list of things that need to be enable in order to share folders. I haven't used Vista in a while and didn't use it a lot when it was popular, but I also think there was a setting somewhere about requiring a password that you had to turn off.
Windows Vista by default does not allow simple file sharing. Access to shared folders, including the public folder (if shared), requires a user name and password. Simple file sharing is enabled by default in Windows XP Home Edition. From here: LINK

 

[Jesusfrk611]

ok, I'll look at the link when I have the time to do it and post back results.

EDIT: I've already done everything on that page and it's still not working... I even tried a different network cable and router port. I'm at a complete loss here...

 

[pym]

When you try to connect to the share, what happens? For example, if you're at one of the remote machines, open Explorer, and go to Map Drive Letter, are you able to see the server when you click Browse? If you see the server and double-click on it, does it show the share?

If you can browse to the share and select it, what happens when you tell the drive map wizard to 1) remember the connection and 2) connect with alternate credentials (an admin account local to the share server)?

 

[Jesusfrk611]

Pictures posted to show what it's doing. Go to map and browse it sees the Server and the shared drive (called Server). Go into the network and it sees Server. Go into Server and it sees all the shared stuff. It will go into Public folder fine, but when I try to get into and it says it can't access it because I don't have permission. When I manually map it by typing in \\Server\Server it shows up on Computer under the drive listings and when I try to get into it it tells me location is not available, access denied.




EDIT: I decided to give up on Vista as well and revert back to XP Pro. I had some initial driver issues to resolve, but once I got it taken care of, all my Windows 7 machines found my Server and the shared drive. I can use Remote Desktop fine as well. I never really liked Vista in the first place, but when I'm just trying to use it for a system that won't do anything but file and printer sharing, and it can't even handle that... That's one failure of an operating system.

 

[jmacavali]

I never really liked Vista in the first place, but when I'm just trying to use it for a system that won't do anything but file and printer sharing, and it can't even handle that... That's one failure of an operating system.

Agreed. Glad you got it worked out though.