Strange network share issue

Jacee said:

Have you tried your MS password on that computer?

Hi Jacee - Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I have tried my MS account password. In fact... as mentioned in my post, I had this share working until yesterday and had entered the credentials to get the share working.

Since yesterday, the share stopped working... I have removed the windows credentials from the worklaptop and re-entered both the local account and MS account user and password with no success..

Again, this only applies accessing NEWCOMPUTER shares from the worklaptop. I am able to access network shares on the NEWCOMPUTER from the DELL without entering credential information. In fact, I checked and there are NO windows credentials stored on the DELL so I'm not sure why the NEWCOMPUTER shares from the worklaptop are causing a credentials challenge.

Appreciate the sanity check... any other theories welcome.

Samuria said:

You say all drives are shared do you mean folders or the drives. sharing the drives and giving everyone access its great for hackers and malware. how are you trying to connect ie map a drive, explorer and what error do you get?

Hi Samuria - good questions. I am sharing drives at this time. I understand the security risk and will eventually back off to just specific folders (have also tried sharing folders in this scenario to debug).

The error I get is the generic windows "xxx is not accessible" - this is from "NETWORK" in the left navigation panel of Windows Explorer (NOTE: I also have done network maps which worked until yesterday - they are currently inaccessble and show a red X which makes sense given the computer itself is not accessible

Net use gives error "53" - network path not found

Thanks

try this from a cmd prompt

net use s: \\pcname or ip\sharename /user:admin password

admin is an admin account on new pc password for admin on new pc

Samuria said:

Sharing drives can give problems as by default they are shared as admin share with $ ie c$ so doing two shares give problems. You can share with everyone but then NTFS permission kick in and can stop you if not set correct. The cmd should work as long as its in same workgroup and ip range

Agree on all your points - given all 3 computers are in the same workgroup and IP range, I'm puzzled on why this one is failing.
Thanks

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UPDATE - I was able to connect to the NEWCOMPUTER network share from worklaptop by doing a NET USE /DELETE - bottom line, worklaptop can only net use shares from NEWCOMPUTER or DELL but not both. This is a change from 2 days ago when I could access both. Still experimenting to figure out why this is happening only from this one computer - DELL can access NEWCOMPUTER and worklaptop shares both with no issues. It feels like this has something to do with credentials. From worklaptop, I am prompted for credentials when I access the shares for NEWCOMPUTER. No other shares between computers are prompting for or using windows credentials (I have confirmed this by looking at the control panel windows credentials).

Samuria said:

How many shares have you got as you could reach the limit given you could connect when you removed a share

Samuria, another good question. I have 4 shares for NEWCOMPUTER including a printer, 3 shares for DELL (all drives) and 1 share for worklaptop. Pretty sure I haven't exceeded any limits.
Thanks again for all the suggestions

On my home network I have one win 10 pc that I constantly have to turn off the Windows Defender Firewall in order for sharing to work.