Folder share on Win7 x64 becomes inaccessible by XP after few hours of inactivity
I recently upgraded from XP x64 to Win7 x64. I shared a folder on the Win7 machine and access it by two computers on my network. One is a Vista laptop and the other is a XP x32 desktop. The share works fine initially but if I don't access the share for a few hours then my XP computer will stop being able to access it. I accessed the share from the XP computer sporadically all day yesterday and it worked but it was idle all night and not working this morning. To make it work again I have to reboot the Win7 machine but then the cycle repeats. I've had this happen 4 days in a row so far. The Vista laptop has no problems accessing the share. I had zero issues accessing the share when this computer was still running XP x64. I am accessing the share on both the XP and Vista computer by creating a shortcut on the desktop directly to the share address. I also tried a mapped network drive and by going to my network places and trying to click on it there but both give me the same results. When the share does not work, I can still ping the Win7 PC from the XP PC and I can even VNC from the Win7 PC to the XP one, so I don't believe there are any network connection issues (especially since this setup worked when the sharing PC was XP). Network Discovery, file and printer sharing, "turn on public sharing," and turn off password protected sharing are all checked in the advanced sharing options. This is a fresh install of Win7 as well. Windows firewall is disabled on all PCs and no software firewalls or antivirus programs installed. The Win7 and XP computers are hard wired into my router (Linksys WRT600n running DD-WRT) and the Vista laptop is on wireless. I created the share by clicking on advanced sharing, giving it a name and giving read/write access to everyone in the permissions. Simultaneous users is set to 4. One other problem is that I turned off password protected sharing but both the XP and Vista computers did ask me for a user login when I access the share - the XP computer asks me for the P/W after each time I have to "fix" this problem by rebooting the Win7 machine. Another thing is if I open the properties of the folder that I'm sharing and click on the security tab, there is an "Account Unknown(bunch of numbers)" listed and that account has only special permissions checked. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with my problem. Any ideas? Note: I'd like to add that troubleshooting this issue is very annoying since it takes a few hours of inactivity to actually see if it breaks again :/
January 20th, 2010 2:18am

Well I was able to fix the issue with it asking for a login each time by going to the local security policy in administrative tools, then local policy, security options, and changing the "Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts" to "Guest Only - local users authenticate as Guest." BUT my main issue of the share becoming inaccessible by the XP computer after a few hours of inactivity still persists. I really need this issue fixed but I have no idea what else to try. I'll be forced to go back to XP if I can't resolve this. Please help :(
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January 22nd, 2010 12:05am

Still having the same issue. I thought maybe the XP computer had issues resolving the Win7's computer name so I added lines to both my hosts file and lmhosts with the proper ip address to the win7 machine but it did not change anything. I also ran TCPView on the Win7 machine and tried connecting to the share on the XP machine. I noticed that under the local address column, the connection sometimes listed microsoft-ds and sometimes netbios-ssn. I'm not too familiar with these protocols so I don't know if this means anything. When the XP computer can't access the share then I still do see a new connection pop up in TCPview (which again is being ran on the Win7 machine), sometimes it's netbios-ssn and sometimes microsoft-ds but the connection disappears from the list after a few seconds since the XP computer can't access the share. This makes me think that it is something screwy with the permissions on the Win7 machine and I do have "everyone" with full read/write and full control selected.
January 30th, 2010 4:18am

Anybody? This issue has been killing me for the last few months... I have to restart my Windows 7 box daily because of it.
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March 17th, 2010 6:44pm

I'm having the exact same problem. Any solutions yet?
May 23rd, 2010 12:25am

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