I have 3 PCs on my Windows 10 home network (2 wired desktops running Win10 Pro and a wireless laptop running Win10 Home). All are on the same Workgroup, and I log into all of them with the same Microsoft account, verified on all machines.
I have shared some folders on PC #1 with My Microsoft Username (myuseraccount@outlook.com). I can access those folders fine from my laptop, and I can *see* the folders on PC #2 but clicking on them produces the error, "Windows cannot access \PC1foldername -- You do not have access to \PC1foldername. Contact your administrator to request access."
Note that I also have shared some folders on PC #1 with "Everyone", and I can access them fine on both machines. It's only the folders shared with my Microsoft username that produce the error on just that one machine.
How do I fix this?
And now after trying numerous troubleshooting steps, I can't see any of my other computers in the Network File Explorer window on that same machine any more. I can see Media Devices, Network Infrastructure and Other Devices, but none of my Computers, not even the one I'm working on.
So I assume my whole networking configuration is hosed on that machine.
Windows is always so infuriating, I can't do the simplest thing like share files with myself, not even on Windows 10 which is supposed to be so wonderful.
I'm about ready so revert back to Win7, not that that's any better, but at least I could see my networked machines.
Can you do a system restore to a time before the network got hosed?
I solved this so I here's what I did in case someone else has the same question.
To make a long story short it seemed to be related to problems with the Homegroup. Apparently updating from previous Windows versions to Windows 10 broke the Homegroup settings on each computer which also somehow impacted file sharing among the Workgroup too. At first I just re-entered my old password to get the Homegroup back up and running. That partially fixed things but it still didn't seem to be working 100% so I deleted and recreated the Homegroup to finish the job.
I had to tell all my machines to leave the Homegroup, then turn off all machines except the main one in order to create a new Homegroup, then turn all the other machines back on and join that new Homegroup.
Home Group sharing is a good solution
you might also change some advanced sharing options in Network and sharing.
you can there set it from use Home Group to "use usernames and passwords"
in this way you can just use the same name as a user on all pc's and if you also use the same password, any folder can be shared without concerns about Home groups etc.
Good luck
Thanks Harpert. To be clear, I don't use Homegroup for file sharing. I prefer to share folders over the network, but the broken Homegroup was interfering with that.
Now that I've fixed it, I am able to do exactly as you said. I log into all of my computers with the same MS account and I can see the folders I've shared with myself under that user name. I also have some folders set to share with "Everyone" so others in my family can access them.
The broken Homegroup functionality was preventing all of that from working, though.
same here, MS has a bug up it's but with sharing stuff.. they are my computers, I want to open folder add remove and share files, but am always getting messages telling me I can't or I need to blah blah blah, too much security, they make it hard to use your own computer.. I just want to tell my computer everything is shared, leave me alone! It seems there is no one east way to click on the drive and say share all, and leave me alone!
