HELP!\\computer is not accessible.You might not have permission to use this network
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Hi all,

I have two computers hooked on a router both running windows Vista. Both connect to the Internet fine.

One computer has allowed me access to the other e.g
Laptop has access to files on Desktop Computer

But Desktop Computer can access the Document Folder, BUT NOT Music, Favorites Video folders.
All these folder are set to share and have permission.

All I am getting is the message:
Name of computer, file name is not accessible. You might not have permission to use the network resource. Contact the administrator of the server to find out if you have access permissions".

Please advise how to solve this.

Make sure the Share permissions (on the sharing tab) AND the NTFS permissions, if it's an NTFS partition (Security tab) both allow the content to be viewed. If you don't see the security tab, you have simple file sharing enabled... you can turn it off by opening any old folder and going to tools, folder options, advanced, and scrolling down to the bottom to uncheck the box.

You also need to have a user account on the laptop with the same name and password as the logged in account on the desktop computer. And, you may also need to set Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts to "Classic - local users authenticate as themselves" in the laptop's Local Security Policy, otherwise incoming connections get mapped to Guest which is probably disabled and not a good idea anyway.

And, if you adjusted the NTFS permissions only on the Documents and Settings folder or a user's top level subfolder, you'll need to click the Advanced button on the Security tab and check the "Replace permission entries..." box to have the new permissions propagate to all the subfolders in the user's folder tree.

Finally, you may also need to adjust the configuration of any firewalls on the laptop so that connections from the desktop computer are accepted.

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You also need to have a user account on the laptop with the same name and password as the logged in account on the desktop computer.

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Is this specific to a vista only ? Because with XP Profe I can access network resources without satisfying this condition.

Thanks

Not to Vista only. There are instances where this will happen even on Windows Servers. When a service or process is requesting credentials and even though the user is passing those credentials on from a different machine, the service or process is trying to identify and authenticate the user through the local users and groups credentials. So if you create an identical user name and password on the local machine as well, then it is able to identify and authenticate the user.

Specific case in point: I had to do the same thing when remotely gathering PerfMon performance data and sending it to a SQL Server. Even though I was using a Domain based account, I still had to create an identical PerfMon user account on each server I was monitoring because the final recognition of the user account was performed on the local machine.

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Originally Posted by zillah

Is this specific to a vista only ?

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Your XP machines were likely using simple file sharing. XP has simple sharing enabled by default, Vista does not. The file sharing model in effect impacts the ease of sharing and how remote accesses get mapped to local accounts. There are two sharing models - classic and simple. The Microsoft article How to configure file sharing in Windows XP discusses the simple model in more detail. The choice of which model to use is yours based on the granularity of access to shared resources you need to provide. The typical result of two computers being mismatched in their sharing models is much head scratching. Microsoft's propensity to "tweak" default behaviors between operating system releases and various upgrade behaviors when operating in a mixed OS environment give even seasoned network admins their "Doh!" moments.