share with specific people (others not listed)

[ballzac]

I've just recently started using windows 7 after having xp since around when it came out. I connected to the workgroup, and noticed that there is a 'share with...' ability. I was very impressed with this, as I've been trying to share some things with my girlfriend but not not the other person we live with, but be able to share printers and movies and stuff with everyone.

However, no other computers are showing up in the 'share with...' drop down menu. I tried typing the computer name, and also the user name (I wasn't sure which one it was meant to be), but it says it's not found. The weird thing is that I can see all computers on the network and access shared files and folders.

If I choose 'everybody' in the same drop down menu, my files are accessible on all computers. Two of the computers on the network (including mine) have no user account password. The other two have a password. I'm the only one running windows 7. The other three are on xp sp3.

After a lot of googling, I see that problems with networking on windows 7 are common, but I only found one reference to a similar problem on a forum somewhere. The problem was not resolved for the person.

I am really new to windows 7, so I could easily be missing something basic. I tried turning on guest account, and then tried making an account with the same name as one on another computer. Neither helped (not that I expected it to).

I'm hoping someone can suggest what I need to do. I'm confused by the fact that I can see other computers and share with them, but they're not showing up in the 'share with...' menu. My computer is showing up, and my user account, my guest account when I have it turned on, and two 'unknown contacts' (can't figure out what they are, but they're not any of the other computers).

I don't think I set up a homegroup, but I can choose "share with homegroup", and it shows up on the workgroup. Still not really understanding what the difference between workgroup and homegroup is, but I figured the homegroup wouldn't work with the xp machines.

I used this fix to give full control, but I don't think that should have interfered. That is the only thing I've done apart from installing basic programs and drivers.


Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Captain Pooka]

Well, for the sake of replying.

I have no idea. Try going to your girlfriends computer and going to Start>Run>type in CMD and hit enter.

In that box type in ipconfig

Get her IP address and type that in the share box. I know when I set up printers for people that don't want a home network their name doesn't work, I have to use their IP.

I have XP at home, but I also have 7 through VMware on the same machine, and I have a few other XP machines, one vista, and another Windows 7 laptop. They're all on pretty much all the time so I'll go ahead and try to network them all and try out the share feature. Since no one has found a solution for this I guess it would be good if, well, someone finally did it


I'll toy with it. Check back on Monday or Tuesday (1/18/10) and see if there's another reply.

The "Share" thing, just off the top of my head, may be for you to share files between accounts on your computer. Just a thought though.

Also, when sharing files on a network you should be able to password protect it and/OR give it permissions and set who is able to access that folder. The problem I had with doing this (I have lots of thigs to share with the other computers in my house) is that my computer had to be on... My computer ended up being a.. big chunck of network drive with all off everything on it, and I didn't like it - so I stopped. You can get a network drive and you most definatly set up permissions on that, that is if you have lots of movies, programs, files and other things that need to be shared across the network, but not to everyone.

-Q