Windows 7, Vista, and XP: Networking Four Computers

I had installed Windows 7 on two computers.  Here, I'll call them computer A and computer B.  Both were connected in a basic wired network by ethernet cable to a router.  The router I was using was a Belkin Connect N150, model no. F7D5301.  I did not then know of the possibility of turning my computer into a WiFi hotspot, but I probably would have gone with the purchase of a router even if I had known of it.

I wanted to make the computers visible to, and able to share files with, one another.  I also had a laptop running Vista and an old Windows XP desktop.  This post describes the steps I took on the software side, after sorting out prior hardware issues.

I started with just computers A and B connected to the router.  I ran a search, but it seemed like most of the webpages that were coming up had to do with troubleshooting.  I wasn't smart enough to get into trouble yet.  But then, as I started looking at some of those sites, I wondered whether possibly the computers were already visible to one another, merely by being connected to the router and not complaining about any IP address conflicts or anything like that.  In Windows Explorer on computer A, I clicked on Network.  I got an error up by the menu bar:

Network discovery and file sharing are turned off.  Network computers and devices are not visible.  Click to change.

So I clicked and selected "Turn on network discovery and file sharing" and chose only the home network (not public) option.  Within about 30 seconds, Windows Explorer on computer A was showing both computers.  Well, that was easy.  So now I ran the router's setup software on the Vista laptop and on the WinXP machine, and then plugged them into the router.  I changed the WinXP machine's name and rebooted it.

Changing that name left an outdated entry for the WinXP machine's previous name in the displays on several computers.  On the WinXP machine, it produced an error message:  "[Oldname] is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resources."  The outdated entry wouldn't go away when I refreshed (F5) the view.  Note that I was still down in the Network section of the Windows Explorer folders pane.  I was not using the Homegroup option up topside.

At this point, a search led to the advice to go into my router's firmware, via its built-in webpage, and look for a way to configure its list of devices.  Apparently that's where the old name was being stored.  Finding that place in my router required me to go into its installed software.  Doing that required me to reinsert the Belkin CD and try to run the router utility from there, because the link that its installation had added on my Start Menu wasn't working.  It looked like the CD was apparently only for simple installation purposes, either reinstall the software or quit.  Eventually I figured out that Belkin expected me to have auto-play running on my CD drive, else it would not show me the option of going into its advanced features option.  So I went into Control Panel > Autoplay.  But there, I saw that Autoplay was already on by default for all devices.  I had only noticed the advanced features option by accident -- I left the CD in the drive when I rebooted the machine after an update of some other software.  Taking another approach, I downloaded an upgrade of the router's software, installed that, and used its Advanced Settings option to get into the router.  Once there, though, I did not see any entry for the old computer.  By this time, though, a couple of hours had passed -- I had been working on something else -- so maybe the router refreshed itself.  Hitting F5 to refresh the Network entries in Windows Explorer showed that they, too, had forgotten that old machine by now.

At this point, the two computers (A and B) running Win7 were showing Network entries for all four computers, plus administrators on computers A and B, plus the router.  The Vista laptop and the WinXP machine were seeing the Win7 computers, but not each other.  Oddly, the router's DHCP client list was showing the names of three computers, but not the Vista laptop.  The Win7 computers were able to go online; the others were not, even after a reboot.  So far, networking in Win7 was looking a lot easier than it had been in Vista or XP.  I wasn't interested in investing a lot of time in this, and I had been thinking of dismantling the XP machine, so probably that would be the solution to part of this networking problem.

To summarize, networking in Windows 7 appeared to be a matter of plugging computers into a router, maybe fiddling with the router's settings or upgrading its software (neither necessary in this case), and turning on network file sharing when that option came up.  Networking problems with Vista were still an unknown.  I had previously been able to just plug the laptop into the router and go online, and had not tried to share files among other computers.  But then I noticed that someone (I) had set the TCP/IPv4 settings on the laptop to something other than automatic.  That took care of it.  The Vista laptop saw everything.  Its eyes were opened.  That solved the problem for the WinXP machine too.

The remaining question:  was I actually able to do anything among these computers?  On computer A, I double-clicked on the icon for computer B.  It said,

\\Computer B is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resource.

I searched on that and, as recommended, went into Control Panel > Network > Change advanced sharing settings > Home or Work (in the Win7 computers).  There, I made sure everything was on except password-protected sharing.  The only change I actually made was to turn off the requirement for a password.  And that did it.  Computer A was now able to see the contents of computer B.  A similar change on the Vista laptop had the same effect.

Now I could see "Users" or "Users Share" folders.  How to get full access to one computer's contents from another?  The first step seemed to be to right-click on a drive or folder, in Windows Explorer, and choose Share with > Advanced sharing > Sharing tab > Advanced sharing > Share this folder.  I did that with one drive on computer A.  I tried to view it on computer B, but I got an error:

Windows cannot access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder
You do not have permission to access file://computera/SharedFolder.  Contact your network administrator to request access.
For more information about permissions, see Windows Help and Support

I clicked on the Help and Support link.  It said this could be because

You haven't created or joined a homegroup
You're not using a homegroup, and the folder or printer you're trying to access has not been shared
Network discovery is turned off
Password-protected sharing is enabled
The computers aren't in the same workgroup
Your computer doesn't have the latest updates for your router

Of these, it was true that I hadn't joined a homegroup; I wanted to see about doing it without, primarily because I had seen a few notes of people having complaints about homegroups.  The folder had been shared.  I had turned on Network Discovery and password-protected sharing.  I had now installed the latest downloads from Belkin for the router.  I tried to access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder from the laptop.  Same error message -- except that, instead of pointing me toward Windows Help and Support, it said this:

No more connections can be made to this remote computer at this time because there are already as many connections as the computer can accept.

That sounded like old-school networking voodoo.  I didn't want to go there.  I just wanted the computers to link up.  I decided to try the homegroup option, since that seemed to be the only option that might help.  I reasoned that Microsoft had probably created the homegroup thing because the non-homegroup approach to networking was such a cluster.  Ah, but then I discovered a possible reason for that last sentence in the Vista error message.  I had set the Advanced Sharing properties > "Limit the number of simultaneous users" option to 2.  I thought that was probably all I would need.  I tried setting it to 20, where it was before.  While I was there, I clicked on the Permissions button and gave Full Control to Everyone.  I closed out of there and took another look in these other computers.  Now I got more error messages.  On computer B, the attempt to look at \\ComputerA\SharedFolder gave the same error as before.  But on the Vista laptop, it produced this error:

Windows cannot access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder
Check the spelling of the name.  Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network.  To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.

I did that.  It came back with this:

\\ComputerA\SharedFolder is available but the user account that you are logged on with was denied access.

Well, it was true -- as I discovered, back in the Advanced Sharing properties dialog -- that if I clicked the Caching button, I got a new option that said this:

All files and programs that users open from the shared folder aer automatically available offline

But I decided that meant that files from computer A would be copied to computer B and stored there somewhere, if I looked at them on computer B.  I didn't want that.  I had enough clutter already.  I set the caching to "No files or programs from the shared folder are available offline."  I tried the reciprocal step of setting up a partition on computer B, to see if it would be available on computer A or on the laptop.  No joy.

I came across a webpage that made me think perhaps I hadn't explored the requirement (above) of making sure the computers were all on the same workgroup.  In Control Panel > System > Computer Name on the XP machine, it was just WORKGROUP.  Same thing on the laptop and the Win7 computers.  So that wasn't the explanation.

So, OK, maybe it was time to try homegroups.  On computer A, in Windows Explorer, I went to the Homegroup link at the top of the folders pane.  That opened up an option to join the homegroup that Windows detected already existing.  I did that.  It told me I needed to get the password from Ray on computer B.  That was odd, because I was Ray, and I didn't have any such password.  I also didn't want the homegroup to have a password.  It was just me here.

Upon seeing a page that showed something different from what I was seeing, I decided to back up here.  Before going on to the homegroup option, I noticed that, when I right-clicked on the drive I wanted to share and selected "Share with," I wasn't seeing a list of groups or people.  But, ah, when I clicked on a folder instead of a drive, I did.  Hmm.  But surely it was possible to make a drive visible to other computers?

I did a search and found a thread where people were having exactly the problems I've described here.  At this point, the last post in that thread suggested starting with Start > Run (or just type) fsmgmt.msc.  I did that, on computer A.  I went into Shares and double-clicked the drive I was trying to share.  This gave me pretty much the same stuff as before, except in its Security tab.  There, I selected Users > Edit > Full Control > Apply.  I clicked back and forth a couple of times to make sure it took.  The first time, it didn't.  I okayed out and tried again to access this drive from computer B.  No luck.  But now I wondered what kind of user this was, this person on another computer.  The answer seemed to be that it was an Everyone.  In other words, the groups or users presently listed in that Security tab were Authenticated Users, SYSTEM, Administrators, and Users; and since those all had full permissions and the person (me) trying to access computer A from computer B *still* couldn't get on, apparently I had to be in the Everyone class.  So, as advised, I clicked Edit to add Everyone, and then gave Full Control to Everyone > Apply > OK.  This would have been just as easy to do back in the drive > right-click > Share with > Advanced dialog, actually.  Now that Everyone was allowed to see everything, surely someone on computer B would now be able to see the contents of the shared drive on computer A.  And it worked.  Woo-hoo!  So the missing part here was that I needed to add Everyone in that special place.

It was getting late, and I'd had too much fun for one evening, so I decided not to press the point and work through it with all of the machines.  I had faith that this was approximately the answer at least for letting other computers see what was on a Win7 machine, and that's all I really wanted to achieve here anyway, as I had nothing interesting on the laptop or the WinXP machine.  There were some other interesting networking possibilities I was eager to get on with, as described in some other posts on this blog that I wrote up about the same time as this one.

Windows 7: A Futile Attempt to Move the Fonts Folder

In Windows 7, I tried to move the C:\Windows\Fonts folder to another location.  I did it because I didn't want to lose fonts, if I decided to install additional ones.  At the default C:\Windows\Fonts location, they wouldn't survive reinstallation of the system.  An alternative was to save copies of additional fonts at a different location and copy them to C:\Windows\Fonts after installing a new system.

I found no guidance on this process of moving the Fonts folder.  I copied everything from the C: folder to the X: folder.  Then I searched the registry, changed the references in my .reg file to the new location (X:\Cache\Fonts) in the two locations where I found references to C:\Windows\Fonts, and ran the reg file.  The system rebooted without a problem.  I tried to delete C:\Windows\Fonts, but that gave me a message:

Folder Access Denied
You need permission to perform this action.
You require permission from TrustedInstaller to make changes to this folder.

I searched on that and found advice to go into right-click Properties > Security tab > Advanced > Owner tab.  There was no such tab for C:\Windows\Fonts, but there was for C:\Windows.  I went to Edit, changed it to Administrator, and checked "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects."  When I clicked Apply, I got another message:

Windows Security
You do not have permission to read the contents of directory C:\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6.  Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?
All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.

The answer seemed obvious, and that made me suspicious.  I searched on that and saw that Microsoft advised to just go ahead with this, in a couple of contexts, so I did.  It took a while to change permissions for everything in C:\Windows.  Next, I got a message telling me to close and reopen properties to see the updated situation, so I did that.  Still looking at Properties for C:\Windows, I went into Security tab > Edit.  I highlighted Administrators and then clicked Allow for Full Control.  Now I got a message saying, "You need permission to perform this action" -- permission from Administator, which I was.  I found other advice that seemed to recommend these two commands:

takeown /f C:\Windows\Fonts
cacls C:\Windows\Fonts /G Administrator:F

But when I then tried to delete, I got another error message:

Folder In Use
The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program.
Close the folder or file and try again.

Not surprising, since the system itself was obviously using fonts, though it would seem like it could have been just as happy using them from X: as from C:.  I thought I had rebooted since making the registry change, so this time I booted into Safe Mode and tried the deletion there.  No joy.  I selected all fonts and tried deleting them individually, and that got me down to a selected core of 81 fonts, including essentials like Sylfaen Regular and Utsaah.  I was tempted to boot into Ubuntu and wipe out the Fonts folder that way, but instead I gave up:  I went to X:\Cache\Fonts and copied all of the fonts back to C:\Windows\Fonts.  I couldn't remember exactly how many there had been, but the count didn't seem the same, so I rebooted into Normal mode to run System Restore.  My hunch was correct:  some fonts were not displaying correctly.  After System Restore, all was lovely, so I moved on to the next part of my life.

WinXP: You Must Be Logged in as an Administrator When Installing This Program

In a new Windows XP installation, I ran into a situation where my system was running really slowly.  To fix that, I tried to install a program called Advanced Windows Care (AWC).  That program had been superseded by Advanced SystemCare, but for some reason (price or performance, I dimly recalled, but I wasn't sure which), I had decided not to take the upgrade.  I was trying to install AWC as part of a new Windows XP installation.  When I tried to install it, I got an error message:

You must be logged in as an administrator when installing this program.

But I was!  I went into Start > Run > control userpasswords2 and observed that my username, Ray Woodcock, was a member of the Administrators group, just like the Administrator itself.  But according to Philip's SpeedGuide, writing on another issue, being in the Administrators group was not the same as being an (or should I say The) Administrator.

I didn't have the option of logging in as Administrator.  When I booted up, my startup screen showed only the Ray Woodcock username.  To add the Administrator on that opening page, Astrahost advised a registry edit at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList to add a DWORD named Administrator with a value of 1, followed by a restart.  That worked -- I did have an Administrator account to log into now -- but I still got the same error message.  I checked -- I was definitely logged in as Administrator -- but Advanced Windows Care didn't think so. 

I verified that this was not just an AWC issue.  I tried installing another basic utility, known as Bulk Rename Utility, and got the same message:  "You must be logged in as an administrator when installing this program."

I got a clue from Marcin, who said this:

If the [computer] is a member of a domain, then settings applied via Active Directory GPOs will take effect even when [it] is not connected to the network. Is this the case? If so, you would need to make the computer account a member of a workgroup (i.e. remove it from the domain) in order to be able to modify the local password policy.

Pursuing a search along these lines, I heard Dave suggest that I try Control Panel > System > Computer Name > Change > Member of Workgroup.  But that was already how it was set.  While switching between accounts, though, I noticed that the slowness existed only in the Ray Woodcock account, not in the Administrator account.  So I went into the Administrator account, hit Start > Run > control userpasswords2, selected the Ray Woodcock account, and clicked Remove > OK.  The dialog closed.  I went back into it and the Ray Woodcock account was still there.  I did it again.  This time, I got a message saying, "Ray Woodcock will no longer be allowed to use this computer."  Taking that as proof that computers are not yet smart enough to control the world, I clicked Yes.  That didn't solve the problem of not being able to install AWC, but it did solve the problem of having a slow Ray Woodcock account.  I decided to just use the Administrator account for now.  It was still somewhat slow, but at least it was functional.

To install a program that requires the installer to be logged in as Administrator, Richard Harper suggested (for Vista) that you right-click on the program to be installed and click "Run as Administrator."  There was no option in XP, and anyway, I was already running as administrator.  Carpetfresh indicated that the problem also arose in Windows 7, and the suggestions offered in that case seemed to have been things that s/he had already tried.  After reviewing some other discussions that did not seem to be drawing much attention or producing clear solutions, I decided to take the advice of Buckdog05:  it was unsettling to have a new Windows installation be already showing difficult problems, so I decided to start over.

I tried a repair installation (insert the Windows installation CD, proceed toward installation, but then choose repair rather than a fresh installation).  This seemed to make little practical difference, though; the system went through a more or less complete new installation process, complete with the requirement of entering the Product ID during installation and then of activating the installation.  But then I saw that Comodo Fireway and Avast antivirus were still installed, so plainly it was different from a new installation in some ways.  Unfortunately, the repair installation did not fix the "You must be logged in as an administrator" error -- even though there was now only one Administrator account, and that's what I was logged in as.  So I tried again, this time doing a complete reinstallation from scratch (i.e., not a repair installation).

After doing the complete reinstallation, including (this time) a decision to delete the Ray Woodcock account and make sure that everything was being installed in the Administrator account, I tried again to install AWC.  This time it installed with no problems.

Windows XP: Administrator Lacks Administrative Rights?

I had been using a Windows XP SP3 installation for months.  Suddenly, on booting up, I got this message from Kodak EasyShare:

You are running EasyShare software from a user account that does not have administrative privileges.  As a result, you may not have access to some of the pictures on your computer and some of the features of the software may not be available.  For more information please go to the EasyShare support web site at http://www.kodak.com/go/EasyShareSupport.

They lost me at the first sentence.  According to Start > Run > control userpasswords2, the Ray Woodcock account was a member of the Administrators group, and no other, and that was the same for the Administrator.  That is, I should have had the same privileges, when logged in as Ray Woodcock, that I had if I would log in as Administrator.  But it was not simple an EasyShare problem.  Suddenly I was also unable to move or delete files in the My Documents folder.  Attempting to do so would give me this error message:

Error Deleting File or Folder
Cannot delete [filename]: Access is denied.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

So it seemed to be a situation in which Ray Woodcock had administrative privileges, and yet did not have administrative privileges.  If it had been just a matter of deleting unwanted files that WinXP did not want to let me delete, I would have used one of the several methods for working around that.  (My own favorite was to run Windows XP within a virtual machine, running on Ubuntu, and just drop out of WinXP and use Ubuntu to delete or move the files in question.)  But the simultaneous arrival of the Kodak EasyShare message, which I had not seen before, suggested that I had a bigger problem.

I used Notepad to create a plain text file in a different folder, and then tried to delete it.  That worked.  I tried the same thing in the problematic folder, and that worked too.  So I could delete .txt files in that folder, but not .exe files.

I noticed that Windows Explorer was not automatically updating or refreshing itself when I created or deleted those files; I had to hit F5 to refresh manually.  In Start > Run > regedit, I went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update and saw that, sure enough, the UpdateMode value was set to zero.  I changed that to 1 and rebooted.  That problem seemed to be fixed; but then it wasn't.  One or two reboots later, it was back.  More generally, Windows Explorer was not responsive when I tried to highlight something.

Something else had changed, too:  my system was now defaulting to log into the Administrator account as well as the Ray Woodcock account (and, weirdly, even the Administrator login produced that EasyShare message about not having administrative privileges).  I logged off the Administrator account and, in the Ray Woodcock account, I went into regedit again, to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and saw that the default user name was Administrator.  I changed that (and also AltDefaultUserName) to Ray Woodcock and rebooted.  Now at least the login part was fixed.  But I was still getting that EasyShare message.

I decided to experiment with creating and deleting different file types in that folder.  It seemed odd that I could create and delete .txt files but not the .exe file that I had tried to delete, in that same folder.  I created a new .txt file and renamed it to be a .pdf file, and then I deleted it.  No problem.  I did the same as an .exe.  I could create the .exe, but I got the "Cannot delete" error when I tried to delete it.  Same thing in another folder.

I tried exploring one of the routes mentioned in that list of deletion methods (above).  This had to do with making sure that I had access rights to a particular folder.  But I did have access rights to the folder; I just didn't have access rights to .exe files.  And anyway, what about that other problem, involving the EasyShare message?

I had just been tinkering with several antivirus and firewall programs, and also with PortableApps.  Since the system seemed to be somewhat screwed up, I decided to restore an Acronis image from several weeks earlier and then reinstall programs and see if I could narrow down the culprit.  As expected, the problem was not there after restoration.  I did not try to replicate the problem, and it did not crop up on its own in the near term.