Mark Fineman
December 6th 03, 10:35 AM
I messed up the workgroup protections or something on my new
Windows XP system.
I recently bought a system with a factory installed version of
Windows XP Professional. I have 2 other systems:
. One running Windows XP Professional that only has the
Administrator username and does not require a password for login.
. One running Windows 98 SE that requires a username and password
for login.
When I booted the new system for the first time it ran a setup
routine to customize the system.
As part of the customization, I was given the chance to set
a password for Administrator - I chose not to set one. I was also
given a chance to setup additional usernames. I set up 2, but
did not give either a username. Therefore is was possible to click
on either of the 2 additional usernames and login to it without
entering a password.
I put the new system in a workgroup and shared its C: drive. At
that point all 3 systems could see all of the files on the other
2 systems except for the files the Windows XP wouldn't let you
share. The 2 Windows XP systems use NTFS; the Windows 98 system
uses FAT32.
After I had things mostly running correctly I decided to put
a password on all of the accounts. Changing passwords on the
2 additional accounts was easy, but I had to switch to the "classic"
login style in order to login to the Administrator username.
When I tried to do this I got a popup window saying something about
having to stop sychronization of offline files in order to continue.
I clicked to indicate that was OK; I didn't take note of exactly
what the message was since the implication was that the service
would be started at when the system was rebooted.
When I set the password and changed things back to the XP login
style I found that the new XP system could not see the other machines
in the workgroup and the other machines in the workgroup couldn't see
the new XP me. I thought the there was some problem with not having
the same passwords for the same usernames that caused the trouble, so
I changed all 3 of the new XP passwords to null, but that didn't seem
to have any effect.
This is the current state:
New Windows XP, with multiple usernames, all with null password
. sees workgroup and itself, and its disks
(My Network Places, click on Entire Network,
click on workgroup, click disk, ...)
. does not see the other machines in the workgroup. If
use Internet Explorer and give the path name for another machine
(\\OLDXP) or the pathname for a shared disk (\\OLDXP\C),
I get a a popup window titled "Address Bar" with contents something
like:
(X) Windows cannot file '\\OLDXP'. Check the spelling and try
again, or try searching for the item by clicking on the
Start button and then clicking Search.
[OK]
(the message contains '\\OLDXP\C' if that was what was looked for.
Windows XP system with only 1 username and no password
. sees workgroup and all disks not on XPsick.
Note that it sees the disks on the windows 98 SE system
that needs passwords for login, even though no password
is required for login on this Windows XP Professional system.
. sees XPsick, but when I click on it to see the disks I get
a popup window titled "Windows Explorer", the contents of
which looks something like this:
(X) \\XPsick is not accessible. You might not have permission
to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of
this server to find out if you have access permissions.
The network path was not found.
[OK]
On the Windows 98 SE system with passwords I get the same results as
on the Windows XP system with no passwords:
. it can see the other machines in the group, but gets
an error which trying to get the list of shared files
from the New XP system.
Also:
While I was trying to fix things I got to a point where I got a
message asking me for the password for
\\NewXP\IPC$
when I tried to access the NewXP files from the Windows 98 system.
At that point no password was required for the username on NewXP,
so I tried using a null password for the IPC$, but Windows 98
still said the password was wrong. When I changed the password
on NewXP to match that on the Windows 98 system I was able to
access the disk. This sort of works, but originally there was
no need for the passwords to match. I'd really like to get back
to not needing any password for shared file access between any
of the machines once the user has logged on to any one of the
machines. (Don't worry about security.)
Windows XP system.
I recently bought a system with a factory installed version of
Windows XP Professional. I have 2 other systems:
. One running Windows XP Professional that only has the
Administrator username and does not require a password for login.
. One running Windows 98 SE that requires a username and password
for login.
When I booted the new system for the first time it ran a setup
routine to customize the system.
As part of the customization, I was given the chance to set
a password for Administrator - I chose not to set one. I was also
given a chance to setup additional usernames. I set up 2, but
did not give either a username. Therefore is was possible to click
on either of the 2 additional usernames and login to it without
entering a password.
I put the new system in a workgroup and shared its C: drive. At
that point all 3 systems could see all of the files on the other
2 systems except for the files the Windows XP wouldn't let you
share. The 2 Windows XP systems use NTFS; the Windows 98 system
uses FAT32.
After I had things mostly running correctly I decided to put
a password on all of the accounts. Changing passwords on the
2 additional accounts was easy, but I had to switch to the "classic"
login style in order to login to the Administrator username.
When I tried to do this I got a popup window saying something about
having to stop sychronization of offline files in order to continue.
I clicked to indicate that was OK; I didn't take note of exactly
what the message was since the implication was that the service
would be started at when the system was rebooted.
When I set the password and changed things back to the XP login
style I found that the new XP system could not see the other machines
in the workgroup and the other machines in the workgroup couldn't see
the new XP me. I thought the there was some problem with not having
the same passwords for the same usernames that caused the trouble, so
I changed all 3 of the new XP passwords to null, but that didn't seem
to have any effect.
This is the current state:
New Windows XP, with multiple usernames, all with null password
. sees workgroup and itself, and its disks
(My Network Places, click on Entire Network,
click on workgroup, click disk, ...)
. does not see the other machines in the workgroup. If
use Internet Explorer and give the path name for another machine
(\\OLDXP) or the pathname for a shared disk (\\OLDXP\C),
I get a a popup window titled "Address Bar" with contents something
like:
(X) Windows cannot file '\\OLDXP'. Check the spelling and try
again, or try searching for the item by clicking on the
Start button and then clicking Search.
[OK]
(the message contains '\\OLDXP\C' if that was what was looked for.
Windows XP system with only 1 username and no password
. sees workgroup and all disks not on XPsick.
Note that it sees the disks on the windows 98 SE system
that needs passwords for login, even though no password
is required for login on this Windows XP Professional system.
. sees XPsick, but when I click on it to see the disks I get
a popup window titled "Windows Explorer", the contents of
which looks something like this:
(X) \\XPsick is not accessible. You might not have permission
to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of
this server to find out if you have access permissions.
The network path was not found.
[OK]
On the Windows 98 SE system with passwords I get the same results as
on the Windows XP system with no passwords:
. it can see the other machines in the group, but gets
an error which trying to get the list of shared files
from the New XP system.
Also:
While I was trying to fix things I got to a point where I got a
message asking me for the password for
\\NewXP\IPC$
when I tried to access the NewXP files from the Windows 98 system.
At that point no password was required for the username on NewXP,
so I tried using a null password for the IPC$, but Windows 98
still said the password was wrong. When I changed the password
on NewXP to match that on the Windows 98 system I was able to
access the disk. This sort of works, but originally there was
no need for the passwords to match. I'd really like to get back
to not needing any password for shared file access between any
of the machines once the user has logged on to any one of the
machines. (Don't worry about security.)