Sharing a folder shares the entire PC - why?


  1. Posts : 318
    Dual-boot Win 7 & 10, both Pro 64-bit, now with a Hyper-V VM of Win 11
       #1

    Sharing a folder shares the entire PC - why?


    I have a few PCs on a SOHO LAN -- my wife's mini-office with three employees, each with a PC, all on the LAN side of a router.

    Actually, our first employee now has two PCs - her original old Win 7 Pro 64-bit PC (Dell Optiplex 780 Desktop) and hew brand new Win 10 Pro 64-bit PC, v 21H2 (Dell Optiplex 7000 Tower), which I am setting up today (Sunday).

    I set up the new Win 10 PC with the exact same User Account names and passwords as the old Win 7 PC for this employee. So both PCs have a user account "Ethel" with the same log on password "Perfume". (Actually they are other words but you get the idea.) And in C:\Users in each PC the folder for that account has the same folder name "Ethel".

    We are leaving it to her to copy numerous folders and files from her old Win 7 PC to her new Win 10 PC.

    To make this easier for her, on the new Win 10 PC, on Ethel's Desktop, I created a new blank folder called Ethel_10_Target and gave it Share rights to Everyone with Full Control. On her old Win 7 PC, on the Desktop, I created a Shortcut to that Ethel_10_Target folder on the Win 10 PC, and it works. On the Win 7 PC, if I double-click the Desktop icon for that shortcut, it opens the Win 10's Shared folder Ethel_10_Target, and from the Win 7 PC I can copy and paste existing folders and files to Ethel_10_Target on the Win 10. Our employee will be able to do the same and then move those folders and files from Ethel_10_Target to where she wants them on the Win 10, like to Documents, etc.

    BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM -- it turns out that the ENTIRE Ethel folder in C:\Users on the Win 10 PC is now accessible from the Win 7 PC. If I'm on the Win 7 PC and double-click on Network, then double-click on the PC name of the Win 10 PC, I see two network icons -- Ethel_10_Target and Users. If I double-click on Users, it shows me the Ethel user account on the Win 10 and if I double-click on that, it shows me everything, including Desktop, Downloads, My Documents, OneDrive. And yes all of that is accessible and changeable from the Win 7 PC.

    How did that happen?

    One clue - each of the Win 7 and Win 10 PC also has another user account, with the same User Account name "Fred" and the same password. But the C:\User folder names on the two PCs are NOT the same. On the Win 7 it is "Fred Mertz" and on the Win 10 it is just "Fred". This might be important because from the Win 7 PC, if I click on Network and click on the network name of the Win 10 PC and then click on Users, I do NOT see the Fred user.

    On the Win 7 PC, in advanced sharing settings for networking, Password protected sharing is turned off. On the Win 10, it is turned on. And yes, on one or two occasions after reboots, on the Win 7 I must enter Ethel and Perfume to access the Win 10 PC, but then they stay connected.

    The other employees' PCs, if i double-click Network, I can see the PC name for the Win 10 PC but cannot access without a challenger for user name and password, which I have not yet tried.

    It may be that setting up Ethel_10_Target as a Shared folder on Ethel's Desktop has nothing to do with the problem. The too-wide access may have already been there without my knowing it until after I set up Ethel_10_Target and started testing.

    What do you think?

    Many thanks.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 9,765
    Mac OS Catalina
       #2

    Easier to just use a NAS to store user files on than keeping them on a single machine and then do what is needed to only share those folders that all users need access to. The other is to go with Sharepoint or Google One Cloud to handle the sharing.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 8,057
    windows 10
       #3

    That's very long winded by default windows shares every drive with a $ is c$ d$ to use it you have to pass admin username password on the PC your connecting to.it depends how you have set the share as it will replicate down
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 318
    Dual-boot Win 7 & 10, both Pro 64-bit, now with a Hyper-V VM of Win 11
    Thread Starter
       #4

    bro67 said:
    Easier to just use a NAS to store user files on than keeping them on a single machine and then do what is needed to only share those folders that all users need access to. The other is to go with Sharepoint or Google One Cloud to handle the sharing.
    bro67 - you make a good point, but for a completely different effort on our part, and we will be speaking with MS regarding OneDrive for Business for that purpose. But we will be doing something else for inventory management that might include some of that facility - to be determined over the next few months.

    MEANWHILE, today (Sunday) I'm just doing the preliminary work so Ethel can copy folders and files from old Win 7 to new Win 10 -- and they are not necessarily central files for the business but are definitely for her work -- after which we will get rid of the Win7 machine. What do you think of my network experience?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Samuria said:
    That's very long winded by default windows shares every drive with a $ is c$ d$ to use it you have to pass admin username password on the PC your connecting to.it depends how you have set the share as it will replicate down
    Samuria - you may well be right, but I'm not seeing the $ before Ethel in my discoveries today. Do you think Win 7 and 10 share everything by default when three things are the same - User Account name, User Account password, and the folder name after C:\Users? Would I fix the problem by changing the new Win 10 user account name to Ethel10 (but leaving Ethel after C:\Users)? Or vice versa?

    All - by the way, when I'm on the Win 10 machine and double-click on Network, it does NOT show me anything on the Win 7 machine, which does not even appear in Network.

    - - - Updated - - -

    WAIT - I just discovered that, on the Win 10, Users (the Users in C:\Users) was being Shared. I unclicked that Shared, and now things seem to be working properly.

    I don't know how Users got to Shared. Is that typical?

    Did I do something bad? But Users is NOT shared on a different PC in the office.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 16,781
    Windows 10 Home x64 Version 22H2 Build 19045.4170
       #5

    "I don't know how Users got to Shared. Is that typical?"

    No. A mistake has to have been made when sharing was set up. Users is not shared by default. Perhaps somebody else tried to do the job for you the day before.

    By the way, Windows recognises Ethel user accounts on different computers as entirely different user accounts. It does not make any difference if the same personal name is used as the UserName or not.
    - I have the same UserNames on different computers. It simplifies my own backing up scripts but Windows could not care less.


    All the best,
    Denis
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 318
    Dual-boot Win 7 & 10, both Pro 64-bit, now with a Hyper-V VM of Win 11
    Thread Starter
       #6

    Try3 - you are probably right, and could only have been me. Thank God I took the weekend to do this.

    Edit: But there is a remaining mystery: If Users got Shared, why was only Ethel visible and not Fred?
    Last edited by glnz; 24 Jul 2022 at 19:41.
      My Computer


 

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