Problems configuring file share

Hello looking for some help,

I have two computers on my network, a desktop and a laptop. I want to be able to share all the files on my secondary hard drive on my desktop and all the files on my main drive on my laptop. So I had the network setup and the drives shared and everything appeared to be working fine.

I tested it by using file explorer on my laptop to navigate into a specific directory on the secondary drive on my desktop and was able to open and view a pdf file.

Later I tried to do copy a file from the desktop secondary drive via the laptop but could not access anything on my desktop. In file explorer on my laptop, it could see the desktop but I could not access any folders on it. I don't know if I changed something to cause this or if this was some type of WIN 10 issue.

After a lot of "messing around" with both computers, I can now access; Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders (these are located on my secondary drive) on my desktop but nothing more. I have no issues with file sharing the other direction as I can access all the files on my laptop via my desktop.

PS: What's the dea typing on this forum. tried using two different copters to tpe this mssage and boh times this is wat I get. (example of all the missing characters when I try and type on this forum). Very time consuming and frustrating.

Tim

Hey thammondwis,
Check the NTFS Permission on the Shared Drive or Folder ... right click > Properties > Sharing > Advanced Sharing > Permissions ... Make sure the Group / User has Full Control. You might need to Add Everyone and give it Full Control.

Thanks for the help Eagle51.

I checked that on both computers. Both have only 1 user (Everyone) in the group/username section. Is that OK? Both computers do have the user Everyone already set to Full Control.

Still no joy and looking for help. One thing I noticed is that the network screen on File Explorer is noticeably different between my Desktop and Laptop. Not sure if this helps diagnose my issues any.

So on my Desktop when I open File Explorer and click on Network from the left window pane. At the top of the main window pane I have a section called Computer. In that section are icons for my Desktop computer, my Laptop computer, and also WDMyCloud which is an external cloud accessible hard drive hooked up to my network.

However on my Laptop, I don't have the Computer section at all. It's not that the Computer section has no icons, it's that there is no computer section. It starts with Media Devices.

Are you trying to connect to a complete drive or a share? By default a lot of drives are assigned a hidden share prefixed with $ .Open a cmd prompt type net share

post results

Thanks for the help Samuria,

Attached is the results. I don't necessarily need to share the entire drive if that will be more difficult.


The drive I a trying o share is E:

I checked that on both computers. Both have only 1 user (Everyone) in the group/username section. Is that OK? Both computers do have the user Everyone already set to Full Control.

On my shared folders (properties > sharing > advanced sharing > permissions) I have 2 entries ...
Everyone - Full Control
Administrators - Full Control

On my shared folders (right click > share with > specific people) I have 2 entries ...
eagle - owner
Everyone - Read/Write

Note: I use a Local Account as Admin and I'm only sharing certain folders on my D: drive ... NOT the whole drive.

I made a few changes based on your post Eagle51 and it worked,,,for a little while.

Under the permissions I added Administrator with full control on both computers.

For specific people there is no option for that at the drive level, but on my desktop computer I setup a number of folders with the settings as you described (my username as owner and everyone with read/write).

I did one more thing, I renamed the desktop computer. It was named DESKTOP -xxxxxxx (don't remember the xxxxxx exactly but I think it was my motherboard model number), to just DESKTOP.

I then restarted both computers. And I could access with full control the shared drives on both computers form either computer. That was late last night. I went to bed and when I opened up the computers this morning I am back to where I was before in that I can't access the Desktop computer's shared drive from the Laptop computer. I don't get it?????

OK, I think I have it back working correctly ...at least for now!

What I did:

From File Explorer on my Laptop computer, I clicked on "This PC" icon in the left window pane. I noticed then that in the main window pane in the section labeled "network locations", there was an icon labeled xxxxx@xxx.com (desktop-yyyyy). The xxxx represent my email address. The yyyyy are from the previous computer name for my desktop. Because that is an old comuter name I decided to try and remove it. I right clicked on that icon and selected remove device. It then created a new icon labeled with "my email address (desktop)".

I then clicked on the "Network" icon in the left window pane and right clicked on a blank spot on the main window pane and selected refresh. After refreshing, It added icons for the Desktop Computer and the external MyCloud hard drive and I have full access to the Desktop computer shared drive.

I will report back later on if anything changes again. Fingers crossed.