• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

file sharing... I must be doing something wrong

G

glarior

n00b
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
57
I read the FAQ with no luck, I googled and found good articles but I still can't share my files with the computers in my house. All I want to do is share my hard drive with the computers in my house, (2 laptop and 2 PC's) all computers but one laptop uses vista.

All computers are on the same workgroup, network discovery is on, file sharing is on, public folder sharing is on. I added guest and everyone to the share list. What am I missing? I still can't share any files....I just want to share the HD, thats it. I know this can't be complicated......please help
 
You need to set up shares...

Go to the sharing properties for the C: drive of the computer you want to share and turn it on.

In my experience NetBIOS discovery isn't all that reliable, so I am used to just typing "\\computername" in an Explorer windows address bar. (not Internet Explorer, just Explorer)
 
I have done that. It even shows the little share icon on the bottom left. I also have played with the netbios settings too and chose default, on, and off with no luck.
 
Does this help.... I tried to ping each computer's ip address and it did not ping at all.. all four packets lost.
 
From another computer in the house, open an Explorer window and in the address bar type \\computername. Obviously replace computername with the NetBIOS name of the computer.
 
glarior said:
Does this help.... I tried to ping each computer's ip address and it did not ping at all.. all four packets lost.
Click to expand...

Ok yea, thats an issue. Do all the machines in the house have an active internet connection? What is acting as the DHCP server?
 
run ipconfig on both machines just to make completey sure you are using the right IP's to PING then try again. I'm assuming the routers IP is 192.168.1.1? Try PING'ing that aswell.
 
Yeah I checked.... its the usual household ip 192.168.1.x. all computers are using the same ip # except for the last 'x' which will represent which computer is 2-5. Pinging the router works just fine
 
make sure to add the IP range to your firewall if you have one. Unless you are sitting in front of the other machine you might not see the popup to allow

Also when you go to windows explorer or my computer...can you see your workgroup under the network tab? you should see all pc's on that workgroup from there and be able to map network drives to make it easier for next time
 
You lost me on the location of the network tab.... where is that?

I checked the network map and I can see the computers on the network. However, when I checked the other main computer to share with I notice that it kept switching between public network and privtate on its own. I don't understand that part.... Now I am checking the setup using my laptop and I still have the same problem.

How can I do networking at work and keep that going all the time but I cant do this... arghhh!

BTW, I assume you are talking about the vista firewall... I disabled that and it did nothing so I put it back on.
 
glarior said:
You lost me on the location of the network tab.... where is that?

I checked the network map and I can see the computers on the network. However, when I checked the other main computer to share with I notice that it kept switching between public network and privtate on its own. I don't understand that part.... Now I am checking the setup using my laptop and I still have the same problem.

How can I do networking at work and keep that going all the time but I cant do this... arghhh!

BTW, I assume you are talking about the vista firewall... I disabled that and it did nothing so I put it back on.
Click to expand...

When you open windows explorer/my computer on the left (under Computer) you will see a Network icon. When selected you should see all network devices (shared PC's). If you do not then you are probably on the wrong workgroup. You should see the same thing on all pc's as well.

If you can see the pc's then you are halfway there. Try to select one and you should see the shares for that pc. If nothing comes up, then you need to go to the Network and sharing Center (right click the connection icon in your taskbar) and add file/media sharing to meet your needs.

When you created the connection (wireless normally) you will have the option to catagorize it as public or private...not sure if that is a big deal.
 
Hey try this, I ran into an almost identical problem a year ago when switching to vista and again last night setting up a friends server. Cliffs at the end if you don't want to hear the life story.

I should also ask you this. Can you see the folder/hdd you want to share on the other computers or no?

I had a 500gb drive I wanted to share over the network. I was running xp and was able to share it no problem. I upgraded to vista and once again sharing was a breeze for whatever I didn't even have to do anything to the drive. I unplugged it when formatting vista to the other hdd and then later plugged it in as it's only a data drive. However when I bought a 2nd 750gb hdd to share over the network I was unable to share it the same way as the 500. I ended up formatting back to xp. Wiping the drive, sharing it and formatting back to vista. Sharing magically worked again and everyone else on the network wasn't getting the "You don't have access to this drive" permission bullshit.

Fast forward to last night. I installed raid5 on a friends pc so he had a 640gb boot drive and a 4.09tb array he wanted to share over the network for all his pc's. I did the same thing but all his pc's hooked up to the network (running windows xp,vista,7) couldn't access the hdd even with sharing permission on. After screwing around with it and googling for 30 minutes I finally discovered you can't share the root of a hard drive.

What I did instead was: in the root of the hdd you want to share, make a new folder and use that as the new root of the hdd. Right click it and go to the sharing tab. Now you should be able to click the "Share..." button. (If you right clicked on the real root of the drive this option would be blanked out).

After clicking "Share..." click from the drop down tab "Everyone (All users in this list)" and click "Add" Now in the below list adjust the permission level to what you want. I chose Co-Owner so that everyone can add or remove files as well as read them.

Also remember to enable sharing in the network settings as well. Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center. Change file sharing to on, password protected sharing to off and it should work no problem. Everyone should be able to access that folder in the root of the hdd.

Cliffs:
You can't share the root of a hdd over the network. As a somewhat cheesy solution you can actually share a folder placed in the root of the hdd and put all the files inside that folder.
 
Sorry for the late reply. My network icon location is different but its there. On one PC I can see the others but on my main PC I can't see the other computers. I may have found the problem. When I check out if I am on a private, public, or work network it is going back and forth between private and public. I think that is my problem... I hope. Thanks for the reply's and advice and I will see what I can do.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top