Microsoft → Re: [WIN8] Homegroup question

I think it's because the computers belong to the same homegroup. I've come to the conclusion that homegroups are for wide-open access between users, which is not what I want.

So, it's time to get rid of the homegroup and try again.

I killed the Homegroup, and now access is working exactly the way I want.

Only minor problem is that sometimes when the Win8 laptop goes to access the Win7 desktop, Win8 says that it can't access the Win7 system. The computer name shows up in Explorer, but clicking on it produces an error message. After about 30 to 60 seconds, then I can access it.

Are there any obvious settings that would cause this:

If I remember correctly, there was a modification made to the way Windows stores cached credentials (or maybe it was persistent connections) in regards to how things worked in Windows XP and how they worked in Windows 7 (and I would assume, in Windows 8 as well).

Does this happen just after a reboot of one or both systems? Or if you don't access the share for a long time, and then go back to access it again?

Now, I may be thinking of something else, but I kind of recall working with the AD team at my last company, and them having to change the login scripts for the drive mappings because of the way Windows 7 functioned compared to XP. I believe they had to verify that all drives being mapped were "persistent" so that the connection would remain open. If they did not do that, the users would get some kind of error (don't remember if it was the same as you got), but then if they tried it again, all was good.

--Brian

Try using the IP address of the computer, not the computer name - it seems there is a DNS resolution issue on the internal network - people were having this issue 2 or 3 years ago with Win 7.

This seems to have an explanation on what you see - »answers.microsoft.com/en ··· 657fe45c

Answer 11 off this link seems to help too, give it a try
»social.technet.microsoft ··· fb92082/

quote:

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For what it's worth department. I tried ALL the above suggestions to no avail but in my case the following worked for my situation.

Go to Control Panel
Go to Credential Manager on each Windows 7 machine on the network
Under Windows Credentials, type in the name of each machine, username and password

It sounds too simple but it worked for me. The shared files and folders popped right up after this!

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Although not for others, that's 2 options for you to test.

Some of the more tech people here maybe able to explain why or why not of this though.

It's NOT a one-time thing. There seems to be some sort of timeout. Once the connection is established, I can access the files OK. But after I leave it idle for some period of time (say, 5 minutes), the delay comes back.

Again, this is only on the Win8 system accessing the Win7 system. Win7 accessing Win8 has no delay.

I think I solved the problem. I uninstalled Classic Explorer (part of Classic Shell) on the Win8 system, and the problem went away. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that was the cause.

Nope, the problem wasn't solved. I'm still getting timeouts, but only when using the Win8 system to access files on the Win7 system.

Again, I'm not one who has ever used a homegroup, I like to do it the "old school" way using usernames and passwords, and shares.

With that being said, how are you mapping your drives? There are of course many ways to do it in Windows 7 (and I would guess Windows 8 as well).

If this is something you always want to have connected, I would go into Windows Explorer, and click on the button for "Map Network Drive". I know in Windows 7, that is option near the top of the screen.

The screen that comes up when you do that is shown above (again, from Windows 7). I would then put in the full name of the share as shown below

• \\192.168.0.1\sharename
OR
• \\mymachinename\sharename

Then, make sure the box "reconnect at login" is checked. Also, if you want to connect using a different set of credentials (which would probably be the case unless you have the same username and password on the box you are trying to connect to), check that box as well. When you do that, you will be presented with a 2nd dialog box, where you will enter in the username and password that you want to use to connect. Make sure you enter the information for that box in the following format

Username: mymachinename\username
Password: password

Or

Username: 192.168.0.1\username
Password: password

Again, while the homegroup concept is suppose to make things easier on the end user and remove all these steps, it may be worth a shot to give this a try and see if it works.
You may also want to verify how your shares are setup as well (permissions and all that), on both the share itself, and the directories in the share for the user that is connecting in.

--Brian

I'm not mapping entire drives, or even mapping any shares explicitly. I have the following on both PCs:

• No homegroup
• "Use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers"
• "Turn on password protected sharing"

So when I connect to another PC by looking at the 'Network' hierarchy in File Explorer, I'll see:

Network
  I7-860
    Users
      Bob
        Documents
        Pictures
      User2
      User3
      Public
  P850-ST3N02

Login is automatic, and access is restricted based on the user's permissions (e.g., User2 can't access Bob's files). This works fine and is exactly what I want, except the Win8 computer refuses to connect initially, and displays the 80070035 error. There's no delay on the Win7 computer.

So at the same time File Explorer is saying it can't access the other computer, I can ping the system using the network name:

C:\windows\system32>ping "i7-860"

Pinging i7-860 [fe80::8c99:ab4f:f65b:fefd%13] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from fe80::8c99:ab4f:f65b:fefd%13: time=4ms
Reply from fe80::8c99:ab4f:f65b:fefd%13: time=4ms
Reply from fe80::8c99:ab4f:f65b:fefd%13: time=4ms
Reply from fe80::8c99:ab4f:f65b:fefd%13: time=4ms

Ping statistics for fe80::8c99:ab4f:f65b:fefd%13:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 4ms, Average = 4ms

C:\windows\system32> 

So what can that tell us?