Using UNC paths to connect from an XP machine to a drive in W7

Question

I am sure this problem has been answered before, and I am somewhat new to 'networking' at home, so I apologize if this has already been covered. 

I am having some difficulty connecting to the C drive on my W7 machine from an XP machine.  I have typically just used the UNC paths to map drives to all the computers in my house (all running XP before my recent purchase of a W7 machine).  This has always worked in the past by providing the UN/PW of the main user, typically an administrative user, on the target machine being mapped.  Now that I have a new W7 machine, I am unable to use the UNC path (\W7COMPNAME\c$) to connect to my W7 machine.  I am able to ping the W7 machine from the XP machine.  I am also prompted with a user authentication box, but I can not authenticate using the UN/PW for the W7 machine (I have double and triple checked the PW, I have also removed the PW completely).  Whenever I try to authenticate, no error is thrown, the box just reappears.

Can anyone help lead me in the right direction?  What other information do you need to help me?

Thanks in advance!

Luke

Answer 1

Access to administrative shares such as C$ is much more restricted in Windows 7 than in previous versions. You need to create your own shares such as Drive-C, Drive-D etc. to overcome your problem.

_________________________

If this was helpful, please vote by clicking the green triangle. If it solves the issue, click "Propose as Answer". Thanks.

Answer 2

OK.  Thanks for the reply.  When I set up a share on the W7 machine and access it via the XP machine, it never asks for user authentication so it is using the 'Everyone' permissions.  I would really like to authenticate when I access the W7 share so that I can have full access to the files on the W7 machine when accessing them on the XP machine.  Is this possible?

Thanks,

Luke

Answer 3

One more update.  I was able to get the authentication to come up when trying to access the W7 machine by turning on password protected sharing in both the public and home network profiles.  However, from the XP machine, even when I authenticate using my own un/pw (which is an administrator and also owner of the entire drive), I get an access denied message whenever trying to create/modify documents.  I have modified the share permissions to give the Admnistrator group full control of the share, so I am stuck once again.  Any ideas from the gurus out there :)

Thanks,

Luke

Answer 4

You must not only set the share permissions but also the folder permissions.

_________________________

If this was helpful, please vote by clicking the green triangle. If it solves the issue, click "Propose as Answer". Thanks.