Hi everyone - I'm back, needing help again. This time it's hopefully an easier question. :blush:

My dad and I are having a lot of trouble trying to set up file and printer sharing. The internet works fine on all computers, but not sharing. There are four computers we're trying to set up: one desktop on WinME, two desktops on Win2003, and one laptop on WinXP Home.

According to my dad, we've only gotten the WinME computer to access one of the Win2003 computers - nothing else works. This is the error we've been getting on the computers:

"\[Computername] is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of the server to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found."

Any type of help would be greatly appreciated... we've been trying to get this one fixed for a few months now. Thank you.

PI, tonight or tomorrow, I'll help you out in chat... I've spent a few months now before I got everything figured out with Alan's help

Before we start, try the following. Set up public guest account on all computers.

Then hit:
run
cmd
net user guest /active:yes



Tell me if it works.

Is it Windows Server 2003? There isn't a Windows 2003 Desktop OS. Most likely Windows 2000 Professional, correct?

I'm dealing with the same problem. Why is it that WinXP wants you to have an account an every computer in order to login? So, in other workd, if I setup an account called "dewolf" on the server there must be a "dewolf" on the client in order to login to file sharing on the server. Is that right? I can't seem to get around this. It's insane! I have a Linux box running a Samba share that has no such problems letting XP machines login.

This just encourages people to create useless accounts on their clients. If you're logged into a public computer, you should still be able to access shared folders without an account on that computer. Maybe there's a way around it, but I sure don't know it.



That is all. End of rant.

dewolfxy, you don't need an account on every XP machine in order to logon to the server. You need your username, password and have the client computer setup to join the domain, not setup to logon to the local computer. Also, it's a good idea to have the user account on the server setup with a roaming profile. That way you can go to any computer on your network, logon to the server with your username & password and everything should look the same from computer to computer.

Thanks for offering help, I'll try the guest account thing tonight. Alan, yes... I'm running Server 2003 on both desktops. I know it isn't recommended, but I did it anyway.

partialinsomniac, that's cool. Can't believe you bought 2 licenses

Did you try going to the Windows Server 2003 Homepage and read through their Technical Resources and Support sections?

Alan, I think we're talking about different things. I wanted to setup a server at work, so I turned on file sharing for one Windows XP Pro machine to act as a server. I created an account on the machine, with the username "dewolf" and a password. Then I created a folder and setup the machine to share that folder, giving access to the user "dewolf".

Now, go to some other Windows XP computer with the same workgroup setting. I go through "My Network Places" and browse to the server. I then see the folder that I shared. When I try to get access, it says:

"\\Servername\Foldername is not accessible. You might not have permission to
use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to
find out if you have access permissions."

I don't want to logon to the WinXP server and use a roaming profile or anything, I just want access to the shared folder.

If I go to a Win98 machine we have in our lab, and log into that machine with the username "dewolf" and correct password, I can get to that server and write to the directory just fine.

Do you know any way around this? I just want to be able to be logged on as any user on any WinXP computer and browse to that share and access it using a username and password. Seems reasonable to me, since it works just fine for my Linux server running Samba.

Oh, OK. I thought you were running an actual server operating system.

Maybe you will find something here that can help: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=kb;en-us;Q304040

Alan - thanks for the link, that's useful. I may be able to get what I want (albeit in a brain-dead way) with "Simple File Sharing". It's still braindead and irks me, though.

When I was setting up my file/printer sharing with WinXP and 98SE, the XP PC could browse all the shared files on the 98 PC without a problem.

The 98 PC couldn't access anything on the XP PC until I turned off the Internet Connection Firewall in XP.

On the XP PC, try going to:
My Network Places
View Network Connections
right click on your network connection and pick Properties
Click the Advanced tab
If the Internet Connection Firewall is enabled, uncheck the box and click OK.

Also if you have any other firewalls running like ZoneAlarm, you'll probably have to set it up so that it will allow your other PCs to access it.

Thanks for the advice Miranda. I already tried with firewalls off on both PCs - it doesn't help. It works if I setup an account on my local PC that has the same name as the one on the server. It seems to be just a weird Windows XP sharing issue to me. I have no idea why the server needs to see that the client has the same account name.

Do u have blank password for winXP logon? WinXP has this new feature which disables network access to machines with blank logon password. Do not worry.. there is a fix

You can disable blank password restrictions by using a policy. To locate and change this policy:
Click Start, point to Run, type gpedit.msc, and then click OK to start the Group Policy Editor.
Open Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only.
Double-click Limit local account use of blank passwords to consol logon only.
Click Disabled, and then click OK.
Quit Group Policy Editor.


restart both machines, access should be restored.

PI, if you want to try something else yourself (I don't know whether Win2003 has WinXP or WinXPPro networking settings).

If WinXP - http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharin...filesharing.htm

If WinXPPro - http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharin...xp_filesharing/

Just got up an hour or so ago... we tried the "net user" command on all the WinXP/Win2003 computers, returns a "The command completed successfully." message. WinME doesn't recognize the command. Not sure if that's good or bad.

Going to go through the rest of the links and info posted - many thanks for the help. Hopefully this can be fixed soon...

I'm an idiot. We disabled ZoneAlarm on both my desktop and laptop and now the laptop can see all shares, and the desktop can see/send shares.

The laptop seems to be the problem now though. The computers can see it in the network, but trying to access it brings up a "Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer." message. It can't be pinged by it's computer name, but it can by it's IP address.

Also, any ways to get filesharing working *with* ZoneAlarm on would be very much appreciated. Thanks again for all the help so far.