This is to explain how to get windows 7 file sharing to work as it did under XP using and Administrative account and pass through authentication. 1st every machine has to have the same administrative user account with the same password. Lets call it User:Admin1 Password:pass1234 So if you have 4 machines 2 XP, 1 Vista and 1 Windows 7 all four machines would need the account: admin1 with a password of pass1234 Next on the Windows 7 machine in the 'Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network and Sharing Center\Advanced sharing settings' you need to set the those according the bold answers below. Turn on network Discovery Turn on File and printer sharing Turn off Public Folder Sharing Media streaming "Doesn't matter for this pick what you need." Enable file sharing for devices that use 40- or 56-bit encryption Turn on password protected sharing (unless you want everyone on the network to have access) Use User accounts and passwords to connect to other computers Finally even though everything at this point is set right and should be working it will not, and the reason it will not is due to UAC. So Disable UAC, and reboot, now file sharing works like it did in XP. You can access the administrative shares etc... Using the built in pass through authentication and one administrator account to control them all. The Useless Account Control seams to be the root of the problem many people are having with file sharing. I recommend this be made a sticky until UAC is fixed. You can find a few tweaks for some of win7's biggest annoyances on my site. http://cmdcomputerservices.com/Windows7Tweaks.aspx

Hi, Thank you for your sharing. Regarding Administrative Shares in Windows Vista and Windows 7, I would like to share the following with you: File and Printer Sharing in Windows Vista Please Note the section “Administrative Shares and Sharing the Root of a Drive” Error message when you try to access an administrative share on a Windows Vista-based computer from another Windows Vista-based computer that is a member of a workgroup: "Logon unsuccessful: Windows is unable to log you on" Just as you mentioned “Turn on password protected sharing”, UAC is also for security; regarding this, I would like to share the following with you as well: Inside Windows 7 User Account Control Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT