I have my HTPC running Windows 7 RC1 and have some partitions shared on the root drive (music, pics, etc). Additionally, on this I have two more sata drives, one is for videos, the other for backups. I had set each partition and drive that I wanted to share to allow full control for all users. By default, W7 requires a username and password for accesss. This worked fine for awhile. Today, I decided that I did not want the password protection enabled, and so I disabled it. I was able to access the drive from an XP MCE SP3 box. Later, from the same computer I am receiving an "access denied" error (...is not accessible. you may not have permission...etc.). Another XP MCE machine gets the same error. However, from another machine running XP SP3 (non-MCE), I can access both drives. The odd thing is that on all the XP machines, I can access the partitions on the HTPC that are located on the root drive. I have disabled my firewalls and tried to connect to no avail. I reenabled the password requirement and tried again. It doesn't even ask for username or pass, I just get the access denied message. I disabled sharing on the video drive, then reenabled with a different share name, but I still cannot connect. I'm perplexed as to why one of the XP machines can connect, but not the other two. The only difference is that the one that can connect had never accessed those drives before, and it is not an XP Media Center machine. Anyone see this before or have an idea how to fix this? I am hoping not to have to reinstall, but will if I have to. I knew I should have imaged the RC1 machine as soon as I had it set up!! Thanks

Do you still have Windows 7 RC in a HomeGroup?

I have my Windows 7 computer on my windows workgroup. I did reenable password protected sharing, and I also noticed that the "Allow windows to manage homegroup connections" radio button was checked. I changed it to "Use user accounts and passwords to connect to other computers." After a reboot of all the machines, I could again connect to the shared drives. I then disabled password protected sharing, and the original problem resurfaced. Still odd though, as one XP machine can still access those shared drives. And my other computers can still access shared partitions on the root drive. edit: to better answer your question David, no, the Windows 7 machine is not currently a member of a homegroup. Since only Windows 7 computers can access homegroups (AFAIK), I had set my W7 machine to not be part of a homegroup.

Just don't disable password protected sharing and it should be fine.