Vista Network Folder Sharing Woes

Originally posted here: 
http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=69692#69692 

Looking for suggestions though... 

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There are a lot of things I like about Vista, but there are some things that 
make me scratch my head in puzzlement. Case in point: Vista has a new tool 
called the Network and Sharing Center. It's a great tool, because it very 
clearly illustrates your state of network connectivity and offers controls 
for sharing and discover. My problem is that they don't seem to work worth a 
damn. I have all the computers configured on my network to allow the Public 
folder to be shared and accessed without requiring a password. Here's what 
my configuration looks like: 

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/vista-networking-screwed-up.gif 

The problem? Despite the straight-forward configuration above, when I try to 
access several of my machines configured that way, I'm prompted for a 
password, but it never remembers the password even if I check the box. Only 
one of my machines seems to work properly in this regard, letting anyone on 
the network access the Public folder. I right-clicked and checked the 
properties of the Public folder on the problematic computers, looking 
specifically at the Security tab, and the permissions are set to EVERYONE 
with all the check marks in the ALLOW column. I drilled down several layers 
into the deep permission settings, but everything looks fine. I also tried 
turning every setting off, then back on again - no dice. 

So why can't I share the Public folder out without having to authenticate 
with a password? Why is such a simple scenario so broken?

What are you doing for a firewall? Workgroup, I assume? (I don't imagine you're
using AD.)

One other thing: what kind of NIC do you have, and if it's a Realtek, what is
the driver version and source? (I can tell you a very sad story if your're in
the mood for tears.) Any router or switch weirdness? Any protocol issues? And do
user accounts on other boxes have the same user names and passwords?

I've been able to get your desired state on my subnet in the past, but I don't
remember just how long ago that was.

Now, tell us when you get this thing solved, because I want to talk about
connecting to a named instance of Katmai next to SQL Server 2005 on Longhorn
(er, Windows Server 2008) Beta 3.

>What are you doing for a firewall? Workgroup, I assume? (I don't imagine
you're using AD.) No network firewall beyond the basic Windows Vista firewall.
Hardware firewall on the router of course. >One other thing: what kind of NIC
do you have, and if it's a Realtek, what is the driver version and source? (I
can tell you a very sad story if your're in the mood for tears.) Intel PRO/1000
on one system that won't share out properly (I think using the default Vista
drivers), NVIDIA nForce networking on the machine that DOES share out properly
with current drivers. >Any router or switch weirdness?  Several Netgear
gigabit hubs in the mix, everything is connected to a D-Link DIR-655 router.
>Any protocol issues? Not that I'm aware of. All standard Vista networking
setups. >And do user accounts on other boxes have the same user names and
passwords? Yes, same user name and password on all boxes in question. Jason
Dunnwww.digitalmediathoughts.com