Cannot share on some XP machines

[TMiyake]

I’ve searched here and on google, and apparently we’re the first ones this has happened to because I can’t find any information this ever happening. On some machines, we can’t create new shares. We get the following error:

The following error occurred while creating the share for Microsoft Windows clients: The data is invalid.

Machines that have been rebuilt recently (within the last few months) work fine. There are no errors in the event viewer and I can’t find any information anywhere. I thought it might be a NetBIOS over TCP/IP problem, everything is exactly the same on both. I turned off Windows Firewall, and we’ve been troubleshooting for awhile now (thinking it was a quick fix). Our entire team is stumped. The only answers we’ve found is reformat, but it’s happening on about 70% of our machines. Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Thank you,

Tom

 

[linney]

Just a guess.

The "Data is Invalid" might be because of a Permissions problem, possibly in the Registry?

How To Reset Security Settings Back to the Defaults

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=313222

 

[bcastner]

Cannot use Linney's reset trick in XP Home, alas.

I personally would do a repair reinstall of the XP OS. One issue with XP Home OEM builds is that necessary permissions were not given. Generaly the missing permissions in the builds were for access to shares, not their creation, but some wacky things happened with OEM Builds of XP Home last year.

As XP Home does not have gpedit or the secpol utilities, you need to download ntrights.exe from Microsoft:

Discussion:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q266280/

Direct download of NTRIGHTS.EXE:

http://www.dynawell.com/reskit/microsoft/win2000/ntrights.zip

Then from a CMD box, type:

net user guest /active:yes
ntrights +r SeNetworkLogonRight -u Guest
ntrights -r SeDenyNetworkLogonRight -u Guest
ntrights +r SeCreatePermanentPrivilege -u Administrator

This is a guess only, but missing ACL and ACE permissions in OEM images of XP Home were an obscure issue, but killers, about a year ago.

Finally, check that the sharename being used is conformant. Keep it simple, no odd characters, use all UPPER CASE, and keep it <= 14 characters in legnth.

Note: this is not a firewall issue, or a Netbios issue per se.

 

[TMiyake]

Thanks for the responses.
Sorry, I should have put more details in my post. We are on XP Pro here. The machines actually have old shares that were created 3+ months ago, but we cannot create new shares. We have been using c:\temp\test as a test share to create. NTFS permissions is everyone full control. We are using the default settings for the share, nothing spectacular. We’ve tried to create the share locally and remotely (through computer management). Should I not try to reset the security settings?


Thanks,

Tom

 

[bcastner]

Yes you should.
Keep to local share creation, or use remote desktop.
In addition, Start...Run...secpol.msc
As Administrator, check your ACE priviliges and rights for creation of permanent objects.