Having Problems Networking XP & Vista?

I post to several forums and for some reason this has been a real hot topic lately so I have written a "how-to" that worked for me and hopefully for you.

 

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Vista wants two types of permissions, one for the Share and another for the files/folders that lie within the Shared folder.

Each account you want to have access MUST have a user account with a password on the Vista machine in order to share it.  I imagine the permisisons are just like any other, the lesser of the two will take precendence (I have not confirmed this but this is the way Server 2003 & 2008 behave).  This means that if you only give Read permissions on the share that will be all anyone will be able to do because the lesser permission will override a full access to the file.  Make sense?  You must think of permissions in two stages.  One set for the share and one set for the files.  The lesser of the two is what you get.

 

If you only set permisssions on the share and none for the files within the shared resource, you will get an Access Denied error.  My guess is this is where everyone is falling short by only setting permissions on the share.

In my example, I shared out a D drive the Vista machine and that was the name (D) given to the share. The hidden Admin share of D$ no longer exists within Vista for security reasons.   Click the advanced button and this is where you chnage the permissions on the share you just created. 

 

By default, the Everyone permission will have Ready only Access.  Add the Users or Groups who need access to the share and what their permissiosn should be.  For home use, give them full control.

 

Next click the Security tab and this is where you set the permisisons for the files within the share.  By default, the owner of those files will have full access.  If the user you need to share files with is not listed, you will have to create a user account on the Vista machine in order to share or use the "Everyone" permission, which I discourage.

 

You must make sure of two things up front.  #1 is to assure that you have enabled File & Print Sharing in the network center and also on the network card.  Unless you have a need for IPv6, turn if off.