I have been trying to set up a share on my Windows 7 machine that "Everyone" on my home network can access. I don't want to be prompted for a username or password. I don't want my machine in a Homegroup or anything like that and I am aware of the security risks. My network is secured as I need it to be and only I can access it. I have already removed it from the Homegroup and enabled the guest account. They are all on the same workgroup. I have shared the file for everyone and guest. However when I try to access the folder I get access is denied. I am not having much success and I think I have some idea why. Under Local Security Policy -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignment -> Deny access to this computer from the network does not have any accounts listed under it. But if you click on the explain tab it says that the default is guest. I can only assume this means that even though it is not listed it is still flagged as one that can't access the computer. I would like to remove this. Is there a way to do that and if anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to give some advice. Thanks in advance for your time.

Unconditional sharing starting from scratch: First of all, go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Network and Sharing Center > Change Advanced Sharing Settings. In the Home or Work profile, make sure you have Network Discovery, File and Printer Sharing and Public Folder Sharing all set to ‘On’ and Password Protected Sharing to ‘Off’. To share a Windows 7 folder, right-click it > Properties > Sharing Tab > Advanced Sharing > Share this folder > Apply, OK > Close. Two little people should appear on the icons of the folders that are shared. An alternative way of sharing is to drag the folders you want to share to the Public folder. As you don’t have Password Protected Sharing turned on, you have to change the security permissions on your folder(s) to allow Everyone access. Right-click the shared folder > Properties > Security Tab > Edit > Add and type ‘Everyone’ (not the quotes) into the box and OK. Tick the boxes next to the permissions you want to allow (e.g. Read or Write, etc.) then Apply > OK, etc. You may see some screens coming up with message 'An error occurred while applying ……..'. This is not unusual and can be ignored by clicking Continue.

I thought I had set everything as you had described but I decided to walk through it again. Sure enough, I did not have the permissions for everyone within security. I only had the permissions set for everyone under advanced sharing. Thanks for holding my hand. Sometimes you just need someone to smack ya and tell ya to double check everything.