File sharing between Win-7 and Win-98 and XP

[Nomen]

I've got a Win-7 SP1 Ultimate 32-bit system that has been able to access a folder on a win-98 system with no problems for a long time.  I don't think I have any user-name/password set, or if I do, it happens automatically when I want to read/write files on the 98 system from the win-7 system.  I have a the win-98 share mapped to a virtual drive on the win-7 system.  Offhand I don't recall what I had to do to get things working that way, but it works.  I probably had to manually enter the //server/share as /IP-Address-of-98-system/share-folder because browsing for it turns up nothing.

I'm trying to achieve the same thing with an XP-pro system.  Share a folder on the XP system, map that folder to a virtual drive on the win-7 system. 

I've gotten as far as entering the //server/share as //ip/share-folder and it seems to find it but I'm asked for user-name/pw.  I enter the admin username and PW but it says the PW is wrong.  I have the share on the XP set as everyone full access, I don't see anywhere in any of the folder properties or share properties how to specify a share user-name/pw or de-select those credentials. 

I have turned off completely the XP firewall (unless there is more than 1 check-box needed to pull that off).  Until I did that, I couldn't even ping the XP box.

I'm confused about Win-7 support for SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support.  I've come across instructions that I should see "Enable SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support" in the Windows 7 features add/remove list, but I don't see it.  I don't know if SMB-1 is key to this issue or a red herring.

I note that up until now, I did not have on the Win-7 system, in this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters

The SMB1 dword value, which I have just added and set to 1.  I haven't re-booted the win-7 system yet to test if that makes any difference.  Assuming that I did not have SMB1 enabled, then I guess that SMB1 is NOT used when win-7 is accessing a shared folder on a win-98 machine?

At another site I have a win-7 PC that can access shared folders on a Win-2k server and Win-NT4 server, so I don't know why I'm having so much trouble today getting this working for XP.

In all cases, it's the Win-7 machine that is accessing the shared folder on the other machine, not the other way around.

Anyone been here before?

Edit:  I tend to turn off A LOT of services on the machines I use.  In this case I'm not so much worried about the win-7 pc as the XP machine.  I did have the "Telephony" service disabled, I have enabled it, I don't know if that helped.  I am curious about the Telephony service and is it needed for file-sharing on XP.  I can find no satisfactory explanation as to if that services plays any role in file sharing (or in general what the heck needs it anyways?).

 

Edited April 10, 2024 by Nomen

[Nomen]

Ok, I figured it out.

Even though I had enabled "simple file sharing" on the XP machine, the problem was with the guest account.  Simple file sharing uses the guest account.  I had changed the name of the guest account from "guest" to "somethingguest".  Now, I don't know if simply changing the guest account name was the problem, or maybe I put a password on the guest account, but to remedy the situation I did 2 things:

1) remove any existing password that the "somethingguest" account might have had by resetting the password (and leaving it with no password)

2) create a new account with the name "guest", with no password, and making it a member of guest users.

Then I went back to the Win-7 pc and manually mapped the network drive of the XP machine (//ip/share-name) and immediately the shared folder came up, no prompts for name/password.

Now I might go turn off the telephony service on XP and see if that does anything...

[Tripredacus]

On the host system (where the share is located), you create a user account with password. Then you use that username/password on the remote system... For example, Computer2 is the server (the location of the share), Computer1 is the client. You create an account on Computer2 called Account2. On the client, you connect to the share and the username you use is Computer2\Account2. If you only type Account2, the client will "send" Computer1\Account2 and if the server does not know what Computer1 is, then it will reject the credentials.

Alternatively, I believe that you can add accounts from other computers to share permissions, but I don't remember if a password is required. To do that, you would add Computer1\Account1 on the server side and it will recognize that user. I don't remember if adding that to the share/permissions is enough or if you have to add it to Users as well.