I lost my ability to access my shared folders on my network computer. My setup; my main computer an Acer desktop running Win 7 64 bit. My second a Windows XP computer.
My problem; I can no longer access my shared folders on my XP computer. I had a couple of folders on my XP system set as shared and I had no problems accessing them from my Win 7 system until now. I even had the folders mapped to their own drive letters. And I had no problem sharing my printer over my network.
I've had this setup for about four years now and all of a sudden it just vanished. From my Windows explorer, in Windows 7 I disconnected the mapped drives to see if I could clear it out but nothing. I also noticed I couldn't enable the Turn on network discovery in the Advanced Sharing Settings in the Network and Sharing Centre.
I searched online but kept coming up with the same answers. Mainly make sure the following services where enabled:
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service
DNS Client
Function Discovery Resource Publication
SSDP Discovery
UPnP Device Host
The only two that where not enabled where the last to SSDP Discovery and UPnP Device Host, because as long as I can remember the main consensus online was that these two services where BAD.
So I always disable both of these things with every computer I've ever had including this one. All these years and now all of a sudden I can't seem to do without them. No wonder people believe Microsoft is sabotaging older systems on purpose. Anyway by enabling these two I can keep Network discovery enabled but still cannot access any of my shared folders.
Also by right clicking on any folder I notice there are no sharing options there what-so-ever. And it gets worse because if I go to Windows explorer and click on the Network listings I only see my Windows 7 Acer computer, and by opening that I see what seems like my entire User folder shared, something I've never done and another folder that I know that I've never shared.
The error message from my Windows 7 is The network path was not found when trying to access XP. I also use to share a printer hooked up my my Acer and had no problem printing from my XP . My printer driver on my XP is still installed but with an error message unable to connect. One final note, I could never access any Windows 7 folder from my XP but I had no problems accessing the XP folders from Windows 7 until now.
I originally found a partial solution. I deleted my network drivers on my Acer and restarted, this gave me back access to my folders on XP but I noticed my entire User profile folder is still being shared and I don't see any option to disable it. Also when I restarted the computer I lost it all again.
More research and I finally found the solution. I solved my problem by going to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\Shares
I deleted the user folder and other one from the Shares key and it seems to have solved the problem, for now. If the share had special security set it will also have an entry under the Security sub-key so delete it from there as well. I don't undersatnd what happened but for now eveything seems to back to normal again.
I came across this a few times in the past but never really fooled around with it. It involves creating a special folder that provides easy access to almost every features and function of Windows. It's like a "control panel on steroids", that is on steroids. And it's very simple to set up.
So just right click on your desktop and choose New and then Folder and just rename using the following:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
This should work for Vista to Windows 10.
And basically, that's it. You'll see the folder icon turn into a control panel type icon if done right. Opening the folder gives you a massive amount of options available in one place. Microsoft continuously changes the Control Panel with every incarnation of Windows so maybe this is what they should be shooting for, and maybe it is.
Just a note, the name doesn't have to be GodMode. You could use any name but the period and numbers in bracket must follow after. Here is where I left the name just New Folder:
A quick one. Just happened 10 minutes ago. My Nephew is into gaming but not much into fixing computer problems. He has a new gaming computer and he wanted to watch a movie he had on it on his TV.
He had already connected the computer to the TV with a HDMI but there was no sound on the TV. He had told me it worked before on his old computer and he also said this cable was damaged and at first I assumed that might be the issue so I gave him a spear one I had lying around.
I didn't work so I right clicked on the speaker icon down by the clock and clicked on Playback devices and made sure the HDMI was selected as the default playback device. It was.
A brief check on line and it was suggested to restart the computer after plugging in the cable. Sure enough a restart did the job. I think that a restart without the cable would still have solved the problem.
note: he has Windows 10.