Some folders on my E: drive are "special" in that windows refuses to share them. This has been bothering me for so long I'm considering wiping out the entire drive and trying to restore it from a backup, although I'm wondering if there is a less drastic way of fixing the problem. Here is the situation. I've got two WinXP computers (service pack 2) both using the same workgroup name with simple file sharing enabled. My desktop (with the shared E drive) is wired and the other computer (a notebook) is wireless. Most of the thousands folders on my E drive are shareable ... that is I can access them from the laptop. Many of the folders (maybe 50 of them) however can't be shared. When I try to access these problematic folders I get a message such as: \\DesktopComputer\e\..\..\.. is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administartor of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Access is denied. I found I could fix this by going to the properties of each of the problematic subfolders, and check the "Share this folder on the network" box. But this has two problems. One is that I have too many subfolders to do this. It would just be too time consuming to find all the problematic folders and share them explicitly. The other problem is that for every box I check, the folder name ends up in "My network places" eventually making this list so long that it is virtually useless for navigating the network. Perhaps I made some mistake when creating these "special" folders, but I would like to have windows forget that they are so special. I tried to get windows to forget as follows: I selected the E drive in explorer, hit "properties" and went to the sharing tab. Then I unchecked "Share this folder on the network". Windows took several minutes to complete this operation, while displaying a window that reported "Setting folder permissions". After that was complete, indeed every single folder on the E drive was inaccesible from the notebook computer as expected. Ok, then I re-enabled sharing of the E drive. (I had to click on the message that said "If you understand the risk but still want to share the root of the drive, click here"). Then it went thru the whole "Setting folder permissions" thing. When it was done, all folders except the damn special ones were accessible. Somehow windows still remembers something about these folders. So my next step was to edit the registry of both computers. I searched for all instances of one of the special folders that was causing such grief. I found two places in the registry of my desktop and one place in the registry of the notebook that had this folder name, and I deleted them. Now when I do a complete search of the registry, this folder name does not appear on either computer. Then I even did a power off reboot and rechecked the registry to make sure. Then I repeated the process explained before about unsharing the whole drive and then re-establishing the sharing of the root drive. Can you believe that STILL this damn folder refuses to be shared! Where in the hell is it written. The big book in the sky? I'm at a loss for words. Can anyone help me regain my sanity? Thanks ~Paul

Make a note of the IP address or computer name that holds the shares. Open explorer on the laptop, click tools, map network drive. Either enter the information by hand or browse for it. Once you do that it should put the drive in My Computer or created a shortcut on the desktop.

I would suggest you never edit the registry. Uncheck simple file sharing. You need to explain what you mean by these folders being "special" and not that they can't be shared. Why don't you create new folders like special1 and copy the contents of special to special1. Then delete special. Then rename special1 to special. That should preserve your files but remove what is "special" about these folders.

> I would suggest you never edit the registry. I would normally agree, but this was an act of a desperate man. So far nobody has been able to explain this bizarre and unwanted behavior of Windows file sharing. > Uncheck simple file sharing. I tried that, but it didn't fix the problem > You need to explain what you mean by these folders being "special" and not that they can't be shared. I am merely trying to say that Windows is treating these folders a different by not allowing them to be shared. I myself don't want them to be treated any differently and offhand they don't look different except for the fact that windows gives an access denied message when I try to access them from the other computer. I did not do anything intentional to make these folders special and I want to make them just the same as the thousands of other folders on the drive. > Why don't you create new folders like special1 and copy the contents of special to special1. Then delete special. Then rename special1 to special. That is a reasonable suggestion. I just tried it and it works! The folder I tried this with now can be shared. There are two problems with this however. One is that I have to repeat this with all the problem folders of which there are many ... perhaps 50 or more. Even finding them all is difficult. Or I could wait until I actually try to access each of those folders at some time in the future and fix it then, thus spreading out the misery (or extending it?). The other problem is it does nothing to increase my understanding of the problem. I suppose the fact that this allows the folder to be shared even after renaming it to the original name suggests that the problem is not caused by windows remembering the name of this folder somewhere in a mysterious list of files not to be shared ... but instead it is something written to the disk itself. But if that is the case, why when I instruct windows to share all the folders on the drive (and it seems to be trying to do this, and taking a long time at it, by the way) that is simply can't, or perhaps refuses to do so. > Make a note of the IP address or computer name that holds the shares. Open explorer on the laptop, click tools, map network drive. Either enter the information by hand or browse for it. Once you do that it should put the drive in My Computer or created a shortcut on the desktop. (This one from the previous post). This suggestion makes little sense. Why would you expect mapping the network drive to change the permissions? I tried this in any case, and as I expected, mapping the drive had no effect. The problem folders still could not be accessed.

I have to assume none of these folders are system folders. Just something dealing with permissions got hosed. Access denied is very differnet than not seeing the folder when remote. Coping file contents to a different folder also points to permissions. Please keep simple file sharing unchecked. At the root of e: do a right mouse click and choose properties. Go to the security tab. Confirm Everyone is listed in group or user name. Click on the advanced button at the bottom right. Go to permissions Confirm everyone has full control Check the box "replace permissions on all child objects" and click OK You will see a bunch of files/folders go by as permissions are reapplied. Now from a remote pc see if those 50 folders still give you access denied.

> I have to assume none of these folders are system folders. Just something dealing with permissions got hosed. Access denied is very differnet than not seeing the folder when remote. Correct, none were system folders, and yes I could see the folder from the remote computer, just not its contents (because of the access denied issue). > Check the box "replace permissions on all child objects" and click OK Ah :) This was the magic bullet. THANKS!! All the errant folders on that drive were quickly fixed by the procedure you suggested. I think I had seen that menu before but hadn't quite realized what it meant. > Please keep simple file sharing unchecked. I had done that. But did I need to? Perhaps the permissions selections you told me about would not have been available in simple file sharing? I had figured if I couldn't handle simple file sharing that I certainly wouldn't be able to handle complex file sharing. Plus at one point it seemed to require a login procedure at the remote computer which is a nuisance I didn't want (although this time I didn't see a login request). And by the way, I just tried re-enabling simple file sharing, and all the folders continue to be shareable. So can I leave simple sharing selected? By the way, I noticed you are active in many many threads. Thanks very much for your time in resolving so many annoying mysteries. ~Paul

You certainly can just stick with simple file sharing. Reason I like advanced file sharing is you get more options. I fill in here and elsewhere when I have time. I actually find this entertaining :-) Puzzles for the mind, and there can be doosies sometimes. Best of luck!