File Sharing only available after restart (Vista & Windows 7)

[retrochoir]

Hi all,

I have a Laptop running Vista Ultimate 32 bit & a Desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit. File sharing & Network discovery is enabled on both Machines. They are both members of the same Workgroup.

The problem is that I can only access files on the Win7 PC from the Vista PC if I boot the Win7 PC first. If the Vista PC is booted first I can ping the Win7 PC and see it in the network folder but not access its files - I don't get prompted for it's username & password. The only way I have found to fix this is to reboot the Vista PC. Once the Vista PC has been rebooted I am prompted for the Win7 PC's username & password and can access it's files normally.

With the Win7 PC, file sharing works fine regardless of which PC is booted first.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[flyboytim]

Instead of rebooting, can you release and renew the IP address?

From a command prompt type

ipconfig /release

and then

ipconfig /renew

which will restart the TCP/IP network.

Alternatively, does log off, then logging on again on the Vista PC make any difference?

Is network discovery enabled for both home and public networks on both Vista and Windows 7 machines in exactly the same way?

[rant]
I have a feeling that Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol is probably the problem here - it is what stops Windows 7 easily connecting to XP networks. No sooner do Microsoft get rid of Lan Manager and NetBios implementations, they go and complicate things even more with another proprietary layer of obfuscation.
[/rant]

Since it is limited to the local network segment, it interferes with routing, which thus messes up my VMWare virtual machine networking. I am thinking of dispensing with it entirely, resorting to plain TCP/IP v4.

http://www.fxxxingcomputers.co.uk

 

[linney]

Have you tried removing the Share and then recreating it and also the access permissions?

Look at the actual NTFS file access permissions too.

Do you circumvent the problem if you make use of the Everyone Group in both the access permissions mentioned?

 

[retrochoir]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

I'm going to try them out tomorrow and report back - I'm fed up with the problem at the moment so am going to leave it for a couple of days!

 

[retrochoir]

I have a feeling that Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol is probably the problem here - it is what stops Windows 7 easily connecting to XP networks. No sooner do Microsoft get rid of Lan Manager and NetBios implementations, they go and complicate things even more with another proprietary layer of obfuscation.

Are you suggesting that this could be a name resolution issue? If so, I changed the computer name of the Windows 7 PC and I can now share files with it even when booting the Vista PC first.

So it's working - for now.

But I may be back.

Thanks guys.

 

[retrochoir]

Well that didn't solve the problem as I started getting issues with sharing from the Win7 PC to the Vista PC. So I changed the Win7 PC name back. The first problem then returned.

I tried Ipconfig /release and Ipconfig /renew (running cmd.exe as administrator) but that didn't fix it. Using Net view showed both PCs listed with their correct names.

One thing not mentioned in my first post was that I had a sync partnership set up to sync a folder on the Win7 PC with the Vista PC. This was set up on the Vista PC. I decided to disable sync offline files on both PCs and now the problem seems to be fixed.

Anyone know if there are any known issues with sync center?