Unable to access Windows 7 shared folder with Windows 98

Question

I'm unable to access a Windows 7 (Windows 7 Pro 64-bit) shared folder from an old Windows 98 box: I tried with:

• Turning on file and printer sharing
• Turning on public folder sharing
• Turning off password protected sharing
• Sharing the folder with read permissions to Everyone
• Lowering the encryption to 40-56 bits.

The shared folder works fine using it from Windows XP, and even from Linux with CIFS / Samba, but when I try to use it from Win98 with:

NET USE X: \\SERVER\SHARE

an user / password dialog pops up. I entered the administrator's user / password from my Windows 7 box, but it doesn't work (incorrect password). The same Win98 machine works fine accessing a Windows XP shared folder, so it looks like a Windows 7 networking issue.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I've had the same problem for a long time. I blamed Windows 7 x64, because I have a laptop running Windows 7 x32 Ultimate and no problems accesing shared network folders on that.

I have ESET Smart Security, maybe I didn't configure the network correctly when I first accessed the WiFi with the x64 computer — it was the firewall! Seemed so obvious once I had it working. I disabled the firewall on ESET and it worked, later I realized what was wrong …

I entered Advanced Setup, went to Firewall and changed the settings to trust my WiFi network, that was it!

Try it on your antivirus, or Windows Firewall. I've disabled Windows Firewall and only have ESET's firewall on. If you allowed sharing when you first added your WiFi, you're set, no problems there. The problem starts when adding the WiFi to the computer. If you selected "do not allow" sharing and when Windows pops up asking if it's a home/work/public network, you select public, your're screwed.

For trusted networks, select both on antivirus firewall and windows network: trusted/home, allow/home, or whatever term your antivirus uses.

Answer 2

Try supplying the user name as servername\username

It could be trying to authenticate using the 98 machines local admin account instead of the remote machines.

Answer 3

There are a few settings you need to change, particularly with Password Protected Sharing. It's all explained here on one of Microsoft's web sites:

  Cannot connect to Windows 7 shares (from Windows 98)
  http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-networking/cannot-connect-to-windows-7-shares/002eee5d-9492-4b5f-9657-c076cc977d0d

Answer 4

I had the same problem, and finally figured out that while Windows XP and earlier apparently use case-insensitive passwords, Windows Vista and later use case-sensitive passwords. So in the end, I only had to do two things to make it work:

1. On the Windows 7 side, Go to Control Panel → Administrative Tools → Local Security Policy → Local Policies → Security Options, and set "Network security: LAN Manager authentication level" to "Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated". This is identical to setting the following registry value (so you only have to do one or the other, not both):

   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
   
   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa]
   "LmCompatibilityLevel"=dword:00000001
   

2. On the Windows 7 side, set a lowercase password for the user given access to the shared folder (which is the user that has to log in on the Windows 98 side, and the password that will need to be entered on the Windows 98 side to access the share).