File share "Access denied" on "My Documents" folders.

by rdeck Jan 16, 2006 10:39PM PST

I have 3 home PCs set up to share on home network. The primary "family" computer has 4 user profiles. Each "My Documents" folder is shared for full access from other PCs.

2 of the "My Documents" folders share just fine. But the other 2 will not share. If you connect from another PC, I get a red "Access denied". You can see the folders there, but you can't get into them. What is odd is that the other folders are accessed perfectly fine, and all shared with the same permissions checked using the sharing and security settings.

The primary family computer where the documents are stored runs XP Professional. The other remote systems run XP Home.

Any ideas how to resolve? What would be different about these two profiles that denies access to the shared folders?

Discussion is locked

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Need Administrator account access on all profiles?

by MSchlenker Jan 18, 2006 5:17AM PST

Also I thought the only folders you could share on a Win XP/Pro network were the "Shared"; Documents, Pictures and Music" and there are only one each on any system.

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MSchlenker, any folder can be shared

by Melati Hitam Jan 18, 2006 4:19PM PST

just right click on the folder and choose share...

The problem is that many people doesn't realized there are configuration need to be made... such as Firewall, Permission, Make this folder private, simple file sharing, etc.

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Problem resolved

by rdeck Jan 18, 2006 10:07PM PST

Thank you (and everyone) for your suggestions. For the record my problem is now solved on my file share problem.

The different suggestions made by CNET members had already considered by me, and were not the problem in the end.

In my case, the problem computer is XP Pro, which has more than Simple File sharing capability. I had not disabled simple file sharing, so still have no idea how the settings had been changed to create this problem. Somehow, permissions had been altered to delete the ''Everyone'' security setting in the problem folders giving the ''access denied'' share problem. Yet on the two directories I could access, ''everyone'' was still present, so this provided the clue to resolution. Oddly, permissions for the local computer were there (ie \\Upstairs\administrators) but not ''everyone'', so if you were not on \\Upstairs you could not access the shares from other household PCs.

Problem was resolved by going in through Windows explorer, right click ''properties'', ''security'', ''add'', <everyone> for the problem folders. Problem was immediately resolved.

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the work around for your problem is

by Melati Hitam Jan 18, 2006 4:14PM PST

that you would be better if you just put all your document in the 'shared document folder'

It is a known configuration problem, although it might be easy for other to solve it, but not for some.

XP Home and XP pro also have different way in handling the sharing security.

File share "Access denied" on "My Documents" folders.

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