Sharing a folder, child folders, and files

OK, (pardon the screams of anguish) THIS CANNOT BE AS HARD AS I'M MAKING IT.........

Window 10 desktop. Perfectly normal, PC, Windows 10 64-bit.... Administered by "Harry" who's account is on there.
Windows 10 laptop. Also perfectly normal, boring laptop. Administered by "Gertrude" who's account is on there.

On desktop I have a disk partition. In which there's a folder "A"... Inside A are a bunch of other folders, and inside those are a bunch of files.... PLAIN, ORDINARY FOLDERS WITH PLAIN ORDINARY FILES.

On the laptop, I want to have Gertrude log in and be able to SEE, view, edit, delete and do normal, ordinary things to desktop folder "A", any of it's children and any of the FILES in any of the children......

I DON'T want to have "Everyone" do those things, just Gertrude....... I've been screwing with this for the last half a day. I've read articles on the Internet. I've looked in here. I've tried all the standard NORMAL things everything says should work... I've muttered incantations, I've sworn at both machines, Microsoft, Gertrude and the universe...

The CLOSEST I've gotten, about 2 hours ago was to be able to log into the laptop, view "A", open files in "A" and they were read-only. I COULD NOT make them STOP being read-only.

Over the past 2 hours I've managed to regress to the point where Gertrude on the laptop CAN'T EVEN ACCESS "A"...

I've CREATED an account on the desktop for Gertrude (at LEAST one thing I read said I HAD to create the same account on the desktop for the user on the laptop). I've even made Gertrude an administrator on the desktop (please tell me I can turn Gertrude back into a standard user 'cause she's somewhat dangerous)...

I've gone into properties for "A" and into sharing. I've told it to be shared and gave it a name "shareA". I've gone into permissions, hit Add and ADDED Gertrude as a user. And gave her full control, change and read.

I've gone back to Sharing, and hit the "Share" button. and in the list of people I added Gertrude and told it to make her READ/WRITE.

I've gone all the way back to "A" and opened the properties. It SAYS "A" is read-only. I've CHANGED "A" to NOT be read only and hit "OK". It SAYS it's changing all the children... Close it, RE-OPEN it and "A" IS BACK to read-only... Should it be? Other folders at the same level ALSO show up as read-only, so ...

I checked folders INSIDE "A". They ALSO show as read only. I've checked FILES inside folders inside "A" and they DO NOT show as read-only. But 2 HOURS ago when I could SEE the files, they were read-only.

I went to the laptop, logged in as Gertrude and could SEE "\\desktop\shareA". Clicked on it and got "Windows cannot access \\desktop\shareA... At some point in the past, I could at least GET INTO "A", so things have composted...

Can SOMEBODY who actually knows how to make this work, point me to, or provide simple, idiot-proof instructions to enable a user on a laptop to access folders and files and perform REGULAR, STANDARD, NORMAL viewing, editing, deleting, creating, whatever on a desktop in Windows 10... IT CANNOT BE THIS BIG A PAIN IN THE ***.

And HOW do I set up the laptop so "shareA" ALWAYS shows up in the list of drives so Gertrude doesn't have to keep finding it in the network stuff?

I"m going to close everything now and go see if I can't find some puppies to kick... (ok, just kidding about the puppies)

From what I can see your trying to share a folder on a desktop big mistake it's part of the profile so even admins don't have rights. Use a folder not in the profile is c:\afolder it should then work

Or I don't know, use the Public folder in C:/Users for your shared stuff.

No, it's not an anything on a desktop... It's a normal folder tree, on a normal disk partition...

I'm not moving the folders to a public folder or anywhere else. I'm looking for the necessary information to take a plain, ordinary folder tree and make it sharable with a user on another computer on my local network.

Anybody out there have actual knowledge of how to do this and the ability to explain it clearly?

Its confusing as you say Windows cannot access \\desktop\shareA.

have you got netbios running on both pc
what are the ntfs permissions on the folder
is the account name and password the same on the pc as logged in with
how are you connecting with explorer or cmd line or other

Map a Drive

• On the Start menu, click Computer.
• In the next window, click Map Network Drive.
• In the Folder box, type the path to the server, for example \\servername.cit.cornell.edu\foldername or \\myserver.mydomain.cornell.edu\e$.
• Click Connect Using Different Credentials, and then click Finish.

try from a cmd prompt

net use s: \\desktop\shareA /user:Gertrude Pa$$word

FWIW: I get the SAME error now when I try to access the share from MY laptop, which has exactly the same user as the desktop machine...

have you got netbios running on both pc

I have no idea. How would I check? And if not, how would I start it? BUT, since HOURS ago, I WAS able to get to the share, even though everything was read-only, I presume it's running... But, that was a long time and a LOT of screwing around ago, so how do I tell?

what are the ntfs permissions on the folder

what ARE ntfs permissions? How do I view the ntfs permissions, and what SHOULD they be?

is the account name and password the same on the pc as logged in with

In the case of my laptop, yes. In the case of Gertrude's, I CREATED the same account on the desktop box. So, unless there's more to it than that, they're the same.

how are you connecting with explorer or cmd line or other

File Explorer.

I remembered how to map the drive, so that's fine. But it won't matter until I can actually get at the share...

What am I missing? There have to be a MILLION people out there doing exactly what I want to do. Is there really no simple, straightforward set of specific instructions for doing this?