I have a Windows Vista machine on a network in a small office. I am accessing shares on an XP machine - no domain controller just simple file sharing. I'm logging in as a user that as Administrator permissions on both machines. I map 3 drive letters to 3 shares on the XP, all seem to work when I initially map them, meaning the connection is made and the folder and files within the share is displayed. After that, 2 of the drive letters work fine. The other one, gives me this error when I attempt to open it: "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item." However, I can right-click and then Explore and everything shows up and I can save files, etc. The other odd thing is that the icon shows up in Explorer as a folder instead of a network drive. In the course of troubleshooting this, I have turned off the firewall and UAC on both computers. If this were just my own computer, I'd work around it, but it is for a user who has a lot of trouble adapting to challenges. I've been searching forums on this for days and have found others with the same problem but no solutions. I'm stumped. Any suggestions?

For troubleshooting, I'd drop into the command prompt and manage the shared drives from there. That way, you may get a better understanding of what may be causing this. The command to use is NET USE. To get help, type NET HELP USE. I suggest you delete all the network drives, and try creating them with NET USE. As you create them, make sure you can change directory to them and list the contents. For example to create a mapped drive: NET USE x: \\xp_machine\shared_folder Then CD x: Then dir See if you get any error messages when creating the mapped drives this way.