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The second item for my “Month of Annoying Error Messages” is the pestiferous phrase titling this update. Another in Microsoft’s lexicon of extremely vague and unhelpful errors messages this one simply suggests a POSSIBLE problem. It can’t even definitively say you don’t have permission, only that you might not. With that in mind there are actually quite a few possible solutions for this one and I plan to enumerate as many as I can for your enlightenment.

The first and most basic of troubleshooting with windows home networking is to make sure all of the PCs involved are on the same Workgroup, and in the same IP Subnet. To check your workgroup just right click on “My Computer”, click “Properties”, then click on the “Computer Name” tab and check the “Workgroup” entry at the bottom. Now to check your IP Subnet click on “Start”, then “Run”, then type “cmd” and click “OK”. You’ll get a Command Prompt window. In that window type “ipconfig” and press enter. Now look for the section that says “Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection” (Or “Wireless Connection” if you are doing this on a wireless network) and find the line that says “IP Address”. It should look something like 192.168.0.x where x is any number between 1 and 254 inclusive. As long as those first three sections are the same (The 192.168.0 part) then everyone is in the same place.
Now that you’ve verified that your recalcitrant PCs are all in the same playground let’s see if we can make them play nice together.First make sure you actually have a folder shared on the PC you are trying to access. If you haven’t set up a share yet you should do that now. After setting up the share one of the first things I recommend doing is creating a host file on each PC. The Host file is what maps a name to an IP address in the absence of a DNS server. It resides in \Windows\System32\Drivers\etc and you’ll need administrator privileges to edit it. Once you have it opened you should add an entry to the bottom of the file in the form of:

You can get those ip addresses using the IPConfig method I outlined in the previous paragraph. The names can actually be anything easy to remember so long as they are different from each other. So now to make sure the two PCs can see each other go back to that Command Prompt window and type ping you should see something that looks like:

Pinging pc1 [192.168.0.10] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.10: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

If you see that then the PCs are communicating, if you get anything else such as “Request Timed Out” then try doing a ping instead. If that second ping fails then you likely have a physical networking issue which is beyond the scope of this article. So we’re going to assume that your two PCs can ping each other by name.

This may solve your issue. Try connecting to each PC from the other using “start”, “run”, “\\PCname”. If that works your problem is solved. If you still receive an error then continue on for more possible solutions.

The next step is going to be to disable “Simple file sharing”. Disabling this is a pretty simple process, just double click on “My computer” then click on “Tools”, then “Folder Options”, then the “View” tab, now scroll all the way to the bottom of the “Advanced Settings” box and uncheck “Use simple file sharing”, click OK. Make sure you do this on each PC, now try connecting to your file share again. If this option isn’t available then you are probably running WinXP Home edition and are in for a bumpy ride. Networking with XP Home is extremely troublesome.

If you STILL are unable to connect to the share and aren’t running XP Home then the next step is going to be running the Group Policy editor to change some security settings. Remember, this is on the PC which has the folder you are trying to share. So fire up that “Start”, “Run”, “gpedit.msc” and browse to “Computer Configuration”, “Windows Settings”, “Security Settings”, “User Rights Assignment”.
Now find “Access this computer from the network” and double click on it, make sure “Everyone” is added to the list. Next find “Deny access to this computer from the network” and make sure that your user isn’t on that list and that “Everyone” is not on that list. Now I suggest restarting the computer and trying to access the share again.

Group Policy

If you are still unable to access the share then turning on NETBIOS over TCP/IP is the next step. To do that go to “Start”, “Control Panel”, make sure “Classic View” is turned on and double click on “Network Connections”, now right click on “Local Area Connection” (Or “Wireless Connection” if you are doing this on a wireless network) and click “Properties”, now scroll down to “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” and click “Properties”, now click on “Advanced” and click on the “WINS” tab. Now choose the “Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP” option to explicitly force it. Click Ok a few times and try to access your share again.

Advanced TCP/IP Settings

If you are still unable to access the share the final possible solution is to change the name of your Workgroup and add all of the PCs to the new Workgroup. This solution rarely works, but when all else fails…

This collection of solutions will fix 99% of all networking issues with Windows XP file sharing, if you are trying to solve an issue with Windows XP and Vista working together then you should be reading this article instead.