Unable to map XP Share in Vista - Authenication Fails

Hi,I originally had a WinXP computer which had some mapped drives, one of these being to a shared folder on my work laptop.The mapped drives were used so I could run a Robocopy script to backup my laptop to my WinXP computer.Prior to wiping out WinXP and installing Vista 32 Home Premium, I took a screenshot of my mapped drives.Now I can seem to get Vista to map the shared drive on my laptop. It keeps prompting me for a username and password even though I used the same username and password that I use when I log into my WinXP Pro laptop. When I first go to map the drive, I select the option to "Connect using a different username"In Vista, if I go to Windows Explorer and expand the Network, I can see my laptop (called "Maxs_Laptop")I have set up the same IP address on my Vista machine as there was when it had WinXP Home running on it and the Workgroup has also been set to the same.Furthermore, I've turned off Windows Firewall as I use Zonealarm and I've set a range of IP addresses as being trusted.What am I doing wrong, or what is changed in Vista that I have to adjust?BTW, I can connect to mapped drives on my loungeroom PC which is running WinXP Home, but I think the reason I can is that the loungeroom PC doesn't prompt for a login/password on bootup, whereas my work laptop (WinXP Pro) does.Thanks

I'm sorry if you covered this, but I'm having trouble understanding: Are you trying to map a drive on a Vista machine to an XP machine or vice versa?

If you are mapping Vista to XP, you may need to check your Control Panel->Network and Sharing Center. Find your connection (it may already be displayed) and make sure the "File Sharing" flag is on.

mad max

If you set up file and print sharing properly you shouldn't need to map the drive...nothing stopping you from doing it but you don;t need to.

are you connecting all PC's through the same router?

Hi guys,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I've been away on a business trip.

NickViper1024 - I am mapping a drive on my Vista PC (Office_PC) to a shared directory on my WinXP Pro Laptop.

When I go "Network and Sharing Center" 5 of the 6 settings under "Sharing and Discovery" (eg Network Discovery) are set to "On", whilst the "Printer Sharing" setting is the only one turned off.

In the "Tasks" list which is in the panel to the left, if I click on "View Computers and Devices", I get a Windows Explorer view of the Network folder. As mentioned in my original post:

In Vista, if I go to Windows Explorer and expand the Network, I can see my laptop (called "Maxs_Laptop")

Click to expand...

. When I click on this, I am prompted for my username and password, and although I enter the correct information, it keeps prompting me, saying that the information is incorrect.

Clevo - I'm not sure how I can access files on my laptop if I don't map to the drive. Furthermore, I need to map to the shared folders so it has a specific drive letters as I am running a Robocopy script which utilises these drive letters.

Thanks

I'm having some problems with the Vista/XP networking world myself, this being one of them. I have a Dell XP Pro networked with two HP Vista Laptops, one Ultimate x64 and one Home Premium x32. For what its worth, I have discovered that the standalone drive connected via USB to the XP box I mapped to my Vista x64 cannot be opened by double clicking, but CAN be opened by right clicking and clicking open or "Explore." I don't know what effect if any that will have with Robocopy but I thought I'd put that out there. Quite an inconvenience, I know, and I haven't the foggiest why it is that way. The error I get says "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access them." Open to any ideas...

joshua.queen said:

.... I mapped to my Vista x64 cannot be opened by double clicking, but CAN be opened by right clicking and clicking open or "Explore." I don't know what effect if any that will have with Robocopy ...

Click to expand...

Hi,

Unfortunately I can't map the drive, so there's nothing for me to right click on .

MadMax1412 said:

...I'm not sure how I can access files on my laptop if I don't map to the drive...

Thanks

Click to expand...

Can you not see the laptop under my network places in the workgroup?

MadMax1412 said:

In Vista, if I go to Windows Explorer and expand the Network, I can see my laptop (called "Maxs_Laptop")

Click to expand...

I'm currently at work, so the following is based on my memory of what happened. Even though "Maxs_Laptop" showed under Network, clicking on it prompted me for a username and password. When I enter my laptop's username and password (which I do everyday at work, so I'm 100% sure there was no typos, especially after all the attempts), it is still saying it's wrong.

At work, I'm always mapping drives although in my work environment we don't have Vista, but the principal is the same. ie Select the path, click on "logon as a different user", enter your username and password and Voila - you have a mapped drive. Yet for some reason, Vista won't let me map to my XP Pro laptop. I had no problem doing it when the office PC had WinXP Home on it. Also I'm having no problems mapping to my loungeroom PC which has WinXP Home (but don't forget that it boots directly into the OS without asking for a username/password, unlike my work laptop) and my Ubuntu computer's shared drives.

I appreciate any suggestions, so keep them coming, but I am getting very frustrated with Vista as there are other issues that I'm having. These include:

1. my digital TV card is pixalating when either viewing TV or recording it - I've updated my Video and Sound drivers as well as drivers for the digital TV Card and the Support personnel from the VideoMate DVB-T300 company are still trying to determine why. Especially when under WinXP on the same computer it runs flawlessly.
2. VNC programs don't work anymore. Admittedly the company's such as TightVNC will need to bring out updated software, but obviously there's some security setting which is stopping programs from being backward compatible. I used VNC to remote into my loungeroom computer to set up recording schedules on that digital TV card as trying to do it in the loungeroom with the computer outputting to a TV meant that the text wasn't very clear.
3. I tried to install Cyberlink PowerDVD 6 thinking that installing a DVD player might install some Codec which may resolve issue 1 above, but on trying to run the program after installing it, Vista told me that it wasn't compatible and I would need to upgrade the program. Once again, an operating system should allow programs to be backwardly compatible. What used to run on XP should be able to run on Vista. I can understand that the reverse wouldn't be true - ie a program designed for Vista may not run on WinXP.
4. I right click on a file, eg a robocopy batch file, and go into the properties and mark it so it runs as Administrator, but when I run it, I still get a pop-up asking whether I allow it or not. I've found out from trial and error when my robocopy script which copies files from one local hard drive (D Drive) to another local hard drive (E Drive) would hang on the first directory it came across because not running it as Administrator meant that it couldn't over-write any files that had changed.

Last night I was looking at the event viewer to see if there were any messages that might help as the last week or so I've been getting a Rundle32 error on bootup, and I have over 1000 critical errors (once again, this is from memory) even though I only installed Vista prior to Christmas when I had some time off work.

I actually purchased Vista but didn't install it straight away for 2 reasons:

1. I was waiting until I had at least a whole day to devote to installing the OS, drivers, programs etc
2. Was hoping SP1 would come out.

I've heard that SP1 will fix a lot of problems and perhaps it might fix the VNC and remote mapping problem. I can't wait for it to be released.

Sorry for the rant, but as I get more and more frustrated and my productivity on Vista is declining, I just feel like I have to vent my frustrations.

If SP1 doesn't fix my problem with the digital TV card for example, then I'll either think about moving it over to the Ubuntu box or wiping Vista and going back to XP. I'm only learning with Ubuntu, but it's pointless having a digital TV card that records shows that are unwatchable due to lines of pixalation and/or audio/visual sync issues etc.

FYI, my system is AMD Dual Core x64 4800+, 2GB RAM, 2 x 250GB SATA drives, 1 x SATA DVD drive, and my video card was upgraded last week from nVidia 7100 128mb to a RADEON 3850 256mb card (thinking an updated card may help my TV Card issue).

Cheers

MadMax, sorry if you've covered this but have you tried turning off password protected sharing? If so, have you tried making a new user account on the machine you're mapping from and typing that in on the prompt? Both of these options have worked for me when I had this problem.

Hi joshua.queen,

I gather that what you mean by turning off password protected sharing is the settings on my Vista box called "network and sharing centre"? If so, 5 of the 6 settings under "Sharing and Discovery" (eg Network Discovery) are set to "On", whilst the "Printer Sharing" setting is the only one turned off. I will try turning this off.

As for creating a username/password on my Vista PC at home which matches the username/password that I log onto the WinXP Pro laptop with, I will try that out on the weekend (after trying the password protected setting above) as I leave my laptop at work during the week as I don't use it after-hours on a weekday (too much else to do around the house). I have to admit that if it works, it would be great, but it's an unusual workaround.

Never having more than one user account on my home PC's, I assume that creating this 2nd user won't stop my Vista PC from logging in automatically under the current user?

I will let you know how I go.

It does seem a little odd, but I did both and each worked for me. Of course, the root of my issue may have been entirely different. Another odd fix I used when I discovered I could not rename folders or files on a shared drive was disabling the offline files. It worked, that's all I care about.

Hi Joshua.queen,

Well unfortunately, no go.

I've gone to the Sharing and Discovery centre in Vista and turned off Password Protected sharing as shown below:



As you can see from the screenshot below, Vista can see the laptop in the "Network" folder in Windows Explorer:



As you can see from the screenshot below from the WinXP Pro laptop, the titlebar shows the user account being "maxs"



Also shown below is the WinXP Pro folder's "Share" properties, showing the share name being "Laptop_Docs":



Below is a screenshot of me trying to map this drive in Vista (note that I even kept the drive name case sensitive in case that was affecting it):



I click on "different user" and enter as shown below:



And yet I still fail:



After this failure, I created a user in Vista with the same username and password as my laptop account and tried to map the drive again and failed.

I then re-booted Vista and tried again - failed.

Is there some security setting I can turn off in Vista, so I can see if it's that which is affecting the logon?

You could try this http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/83931-workgroup-password.html

Just for the sake of thoroughness, try this. Forget mapping for just a moment and create a user account on the XP with a different user name and password. When you click on the laptop from the network folder enter the new user name and password. if this helps you gain access then I think I may have a fix for the mapping issue.

Hi z3r010,

Prior to posting this thread, I came across the same tip but it didn't do anything. Here's my screenshot:



Joshua.queen, your tip worked. I went to the laptop and went to "Computer Management", navigated to "Local Users and Groups" --> "Users" and created a user called "test" and password of "testing".

I then went to the "Network" folder of Vista and clicked on "Maxs_Laptop" and entered that information when prompted and it showed me my 3 shared folders on the laptop.

Thanks. Do you know why my usual login/password didn't work?

BTW, I've put down full details of what I did, such as how I created the new user/password on the laptop, in case other people read the thread to solve their problem and need the additional instructions. I found there's nothing worse than when someone suggests a fix and the reply is "Thanks - it works" but I don't know how to implement the fix that was suggested.

** EDIT **

Joshua.queen, after seeing the 3 shared folders appearing in Vista, I posted the above reply, but was too quick off the post. After posting the reply, I thought I would click on the Laptop_Docs folder and see if I could see the contents and I got the following:



Regards

Ok well at least we're getting closer. This looks like a simple permissions issue. From the laptop make sure all the permissions are set appropriately, full access for read and write priviledges. Make sure file sharing is enabled too and the firewall is either off or allows outside connections.

Hi,

Windows Firewall is turned off as I use ZoneAlarm. In ZoneAlarm, I have a range of IP addresses set as trusted, these being 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.10.

The Vista machine is 192.168.1.1.
The WinXP Pro Laptop is 192.168.1.7
Both have a subnet of 255.255.255.0

I turned off ZoneAlarm on the laptop and tried to map again with the same results.

I then went to the Users section of the WinXP Pro laptop and I noticed that "Guest" was disabled as I read that this should be disabled for security reasons. I enabled it and tried logging on with the maxs username. This time I got the following message:



I also noticed that in the "Users" section, there isn't a "maxs" in there, even though that's what I logon with.

I also tried mapping using the "test" logon and got the same "Access is Denied" message.

As for the Shared Folder on the laptop, when you look at the Permissions tab, it has only "Everyone" in the top "Group or username" with Full Control, Change and Read having the "Allow" option ticked.

One dumb question. How come my login that I use for the Laptop (maxs) doesn't appear in the users section of "Computer Management"? This laptop was set up by my work's IT department.

Regards

When you set up the "Test" user ID, did you give it administrator priviledges? As for 'maxs,' just to clarify, it is a computer user id that logs you onto the computer, not a netwrok user id that logs you onto your work server, right?

When I created the "Test" user account, I just went to the "User" folder in Computer Management, right-clicked and selected "New User".

I then was given a dialogue box where I put the Username (test), a "Full Name" and "Description", a section for the password and confirmation password, and finally a section which had "User must change password at next logon". I de-selected that and selected "User cannot change password" and "Password never expires".

Other than that I did nothing else. I wouldn't really know where to go to limit permissions.

As for my login of "maxs", this is just what I log onto the laptop when it boots up and this was set up by the IT department. Because I'm not on company property (I'm always on a clients site) I dial back into work and use a RAS Token when using dialup or I get on a broadband account (eg at home) and use a Cisco VPN account.

## EDIT ##

After posting, I clicked on Groups and noticed that 2 of the 10 groups were "Users" and "Administrators".

Clicking in "Users", I noticed the Test login was there. maxs was not there.
Clicking in "Adminstrators", I noticed the "test" login wasn't there but there was an "NECAU\maxs" name (NECAU is the workgroup) followed by a login string of letters and numbers such as S-1-5-21-299396927 etc

I added "test" to this Administrators group and I can now map the drive in Vista and see the contents of the folders.

At least I can now backup the laptop onto my Vista PC.

So did adding 'Test' to the administrator group fix your problems? Or is there something else still malfunctioning?