Have you been facing issues in file sharing between Windows 7 and Windows Vista ? Or issues in file sharing between windows 7 and Windows XP ?

We have already shared a tutorial on – Problem In File Sharing Between Windows Vista And XP

In this tutorial I will focus on sharing the tips to enable File sharing between Windows 7 and Windows Vista, also for File sharing between Windows 7 and Window XP. After you follow this tutorial, you will be able to share files among Windows 7 , Windows Vista and Windows XP on same LAN or Wifi Network.

Fix:

To enable File sharing between windows computers you need to take care of two key things:

1. All the Windows computers should have a unique computer name

2. All the Windows computers should have Same Workgroup ID

Computer Name and Workgroup ID Settings for Windows 7

1. Right Click on Computer icon in Windows 7 and click Properties

2. This will open System Window as seen below, on this screen you can see the Computer Name and Workgroup name as highlighted in yellow below. To change the name and workgroup ID, click the Change settings button

3. This will open the System Properties Window, on Computer Name Tab, you can see two buttons named Network ID and Change Computer Name.

4. Click on the Network ID button and this will open Network ID configuration wizard. Select the radio button which says “This computer is a part of a business network; I use it to connect to other computers at work.” Click Next 

5. On next screen you will see Domain / Workgroup options, select the option which says “My computer uses a network without a domain”  and click Next.

6. On next screen , Ensure that the Workgroup name is “WORKGROUP” Click Next

7. On next screen you will see option to Finish the Wizard.

8. Now Click on the Change button on the System Properties Window you opened in the Step 3, and ensure that there is a unique computer name used for each computer on your network. If the name is not unique, change it to some unique name and press OK.

9. You will have to restart the computer to make these changes come into effect.

Computer Name and Workgroup ID Settings for Windows 7

To change the Network ID and Computer Name for Windows Vista and Windows XP, follow this tutorial – Problem In File Sharing Between Windows Vista And Windows XP

Accessing Files On Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP

After you change all the Workgroup ID on all computers to “WORKGROUP” and giving a unique computer name to all computers, just restart all the computers and open the Network.

You may find the Windows Login Window for the Windows PC you are accessing, just use the login and password of the Windows PC you want to access and you will get the access as seen below:

Example : To Access Windows Vista PC from Windows 7 PC, you need to login into the file sharing using the username and password of Windows Vista PC as seen below:

This windows below shows Windows Vista Shared files/ folders and drives opened from Windows 7 PC.

Please leave your comments and suggestions below.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

Do you get “Access denied” error message when you try to access some file or folder on a shared folder on a home or office network ?

This is one very commonly faced problems with computers using NTFS file system which most of the windows Xp computers used.

In such a case, when a person shares some folder on a network, then there is usually a read permission for all others. That means all other people, other than the owner of that shared folder can only read its contents and not modify them.

Why Access denied ?

Sometimes it happens that other computers on the network don’t have even the permission to read anything from shared folder (which is on other computer) specially when the person shared the file in my documents , or some file shared on his desktop but these files which lies in my documents or on desktop are private by default when you use windows XP with ntfs file system. This is why Access Denied error message is shown.
How to fix it ?

This problem can be fixed by providing read or read-write permission on the folder from the computer which actually contains the folder.

Fix:

Let us see the steps to fix the problem :

1. Open My computer, Go to Tools > Folder option , click on View tab.

2. In advance settings, un-check “use simple file sharing” as shown in image below. Click Ok.

3. Right click on the shared folder and click on Properties.

4. Click on Security tab on Properties window as shown in image below.

5. Click on Add… Button on this window, this will launch another window as shown below.

6. In this window type everyone and press enter. This will add a user called everyone in the group or user names window of security tab which means any one on the network can access the shared files now.

7. Click on the user named Everyone to set default permissions allowed for the folder and set the permission as shown in image below and click Ok.

These permissions will be applicable to everyone on the same network on which computer is right now. As an example the image below shows that everyone has a read and execute permission. It does not give write or modify permission.

You can decide on permission which you want to give to others on the network.

NOTE:This fix is meant for NTFS partitions only.

TIP: If you want to share the folder with only one or two users and not with everyone on the network, then simply write their usernames in step 6 above instead of everyone, and set the permission for that user as mentioned in step 7.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2010 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.