How to Share the Root of a Drive Under Vista

Well one of the biggest challenges I've had with Vista has been file sharing related. I'm on a secure (read: wireless w/ lead paint in the walls) home network, so when I share a folder, I just want everyone to be able to access it from any PC in the house. It's that simple, or so it seems.

Vista makes sharing folders a pain. When you click share on a normal folder (right click, then "share"), you have to add the "Everyone" permission to that folder in order for anyone to be able to access it. I wonder why Vista would assume that when you share a folder you don't want anyone to be able to access it except yourself.... from the machine on which it's shared..... I've actually tried created an account with identical sign-in credentials to the Vista machine and it will not allow it to access files that have my own name as the "Owner" with full permissions....

Anyway, after some struggling I figured out how to share folders. Here's problem #2 though. I use a full drive as my "My Documents" folder. Basically it's a RAID-1 with anything that I could possibly value stored on it. That way I don't have to waste space on my RAID with my Vista install/programs etc by mirroring my main drive and storing everything in default directories. So that means in order to share all of my "My Documents" stuff over the network (music, movies, etc), I need to share the root of a drive.

Vista will allow the permissions to be set, even though you have to do it manually by right clicking, then hitting "share", and manually setting the permissions to everyone, but then when you try to access it from a remote computer, it will say "access is denied". So I struggled with this for a bit, and finally I decided to dig deeper. Here's how to share the root of a drive under Vista:

In the Start menu click "Computer"




Right click on the drive and go to properties




Click security tab




Click edit




Click Add




Click Advanced




Click Find Now




Click OK




Then just keep clicking OK until your security tab includes "Everyone" for the root of the drive like mine does in the screenshots. You will still have to set permissions for "Everyone" under the sharing tab of the drive, but this is much simpler and instructions can be found for that online, but I couldn't find a guide for this anywhere so I thought I'd make one :)

[teknomedic]

Not sure if this place bumps posts when a reply is given... but...
YOU JUST SAVED ME!!!!!! I just spent 4 hours trying to figure this out trying all sorts of "do this and it works" from other posts and online searching... non of them worked... but this one did.

So... thank you!!!!

It should be noted I was using Vista Ultimate freashly installed with all updates.

TK.

[lowfat]

Too bad this wasn't out a few months ago. I spent hours and hours trying to get it to work correctly. But very nice nevertheless :).

[teknomedic]

It's horrible that there aren't any guides like this out there. I would assume they're out there.. but I couldn't find them... I just happened on this one by blind luck.

and yes, I registered just to say thank you as I was so happy to get it working.

... other posts and searches I did looking for an answer had me modding the registry :rtfm: , playing with computer management and some even saying it wasn't possible.

So... once again thanks!!!

[Forge]

Very well explained and laid out...thanks for sharing here.

[lowfat]

Originally Posted by teknomedic

It's horrible that there aren't any guides like this out there. I would assume they're out there.. but I couldn't find them... I just happened on this one by blind luck.

and yes, I registered just to say thank you as I was so happy to get it working.

... other posts and searches I did looking for an answer had me modding the registry :rtfm: , playing with computer management and some even saying it wasn't possible.

So... once again thanks!!!

agreed. Even the MS site says that you can share the drive, however the description they give you doesn't even work.

I found a few other sites, but none of them had pictures or near the detail :)

[lalinka]

Teknomedic-
:help:Will the same process work if I dont want to share a whole drive, just my music folder? Can I do the same process?
Thanks

[teknomedic]

I think if you simply right click your music folder and go into share it should work without a problem... just make sure you edit the "everyone" option to give type of access you need.

If for some reason "everyone" isn't avaiable.... following the above directions provided should add the "everyone" option.

Keep in mind though that I had no problems sharing folders... and although not as easy as XP wasn't that bad... sharing a full hard drive from the root is where I ran into problems.

[lalinka]

I also shared folders, but first had to activate the GUEST user to do that. Your way seems much more logical and easy. I will try.
Thank you very very much

[lotsoflavender]

I've just registered so I could express my gratitude for showing me how to share my drives on the PC, connected via a wireless router to the laptop in the other room running XP! Like 10's of 1000's of others, I've spent hours trying to do that. I'm not a total ignoramous when it comes to computers, been around them for a while, but what on earth is MS up to with this OS? Looks pretty but it's giving me a big pain with all this security stuff. A dual boot with XP is starting to look really good.......only have Vista cause I bought a new machine.
Many many thanx
Wendy
grandmother of five but who's counting.

wow.... I didn't realize anyone would even care about this "how to"... I've had this up there for weeks, and I don't think it had more than a couple views until I just came back to look at it and people are actually finding it useful. I'm glad you all appreciate the guide. I created it because I figured if I could save someone else even 1/2 of the time I spent trying to figure this out that it would be worth the 1/2 hour I spent on the guide. I hope we can get many users contributing tips and tricks to our Vista section :)

[TheBigTexan]

My goodness - once again the U.S. has to import something from our neighbor to the north in order to accomplish a VERY SIMPLE THING! This is ridiculous - 1st Shrek and now a simple explanation for a complex problem. The poster of this explanation should be VERY proud of themselves. I do not know how old you are poster, but believe me, if you could put two or three of those "Vista for smart dummies" explanations together I am willing to bet that a million people would buy a $10.00 book of those explanations! That is enough to buy a few ice cream cones!
Thanks from deep in the heart of Texas for allowing me to keep what little hair I have left. Oh sure - I could have figured it out myself - - in about 10 or so years


The Big Texan

[djshag]

Like many others here, I just spent 4.5 hours trying to find a solution to this. Thank you very much. Now I just need to find a similar solution to the XP side of the network! Thanks again!!

[oldgeezer]

Saved hours of frustration, all other sites either deny this can be done or suggest complicated registry edits. Many thanks

[Sallyann]

Thanks for the information, I have been tearing my hair out over this annoying problem.
I recently purchased a new laptop with Vista on it, and I also upgraded the main PC to Vista, and then found that sharing files was a headache.
With your information I can finally solve this problem.

Once again, many thanks.