Can't view shares

[fafster]

Strange problem. I'm trying to perform some remote actions on a machine, but it seems that the administrator account is blocked. If I try and access the computer's shares, I get a password prompt, with the username field greyed out, with Guest already selected.

 

All the actions that I'm trying to perform require administrator privileges, which is denied.

 

Any idea what's going on?

[dtakias]

Looks like your computer has cached the guest account cresidentials somehow ?

 

If you run "control userpasswords2", click on Advanced and then Manage Passwords do you see any cresidentials for the machine you are trying to access? If yes delete them, logoff, logon and see if you can enter new account information...

[Michael]

If this happening in a workgroup or a domain?

[Chris_Jones]

That sounds like one of the machines has simple file sharing enabled, and the other does not - check the settings on both - its under control panel -> folder options -> view -> use simple file sharing

[fafster]

Cheers for the replies, all. The machine hasn't been joined to the domain yet. Simple file sharing was enabled, but I've now disabled it and restarted the machine and I'm still getting the same problem.

 

I've included a screenshot of the problem.

[Michael]

So are you trying to access shares from a workgroup machine and the shares are on the domain?

[fafster]

No, sorry, should have been clearer. I'm on a domain machine right now, and the machine I'm trying to access is currently the sole occupier of a temporary workgroup. I'm not trying to access the shares of the machine to accomplish anything in particular, just that I can't access the administrator account in any form from remote machines.

 

One of the symptoms is the username field being greyed out when trying to view shares. Other things like being unable to perform remote admin tasks using purgos have also manifested. They're all intertwined, so if I can find out why the Administrator account is blocked from remote access, I think I'll have solved it.

 

I can log onto the workstation as administrator without any issue.

[Michael]

If you can logon to the workgroup machine with 'administrator', navigate to Control Panel and enable the Guest account and give it a password of your choice.

 

The security window is displaying \\workgroup_computername\Guest so you just need to enter the Guest password. I'm not 100% sure why it's greyed out. Is it an XP Home machine by any chance?

[fafster]

If you can logon to the workgroup machine with 'administrator', navigate to Control Panel and enable the Guest account and give it a password of your choice.

 

The security window is displaying \\workgroup_computername\Guest so you just need to enter the Guest password. I'm not 100% sure why it's greyed out. Is it an XP Home machine by any chance?

 

No, it's XP Pro. I'll give your suggestion a shot.

[Michael]

If you try things the other way around and access a share on the domain from the workgroup machine, that also should prompt you for a username/password. If you try DOMAIN\username, then a password does it work this way around?

[fafster]

Yeah, it works fine from that end. I've even gone into the machine's security policies to see if the "Allow access from network" setting includes the administrator, which it does.

 

The machine is Service Pack 3 if that makes a difference?

[Michael]

Have you tried turning the Windows Firewall off on the workgroup machine? Remember the XP Firewall stops all incoming connections and not outgoing connections.

[fafster]

Yeah, firewall is disabled. I've performed a full reinstall of the OS. Everything is now vanilla and I'm still getting the problem, even after a format.

 

The strange thing is, it didn't happen the other day. When I first installed windows, I could access it without issue.