External Drives and Files Sharing receives Access Error...

Hi Guys.

Hope everyone is having a great new year so far.

After formatting and installing a fresh Windows 8 Enterprise I am still unable to access any shared drives or folders on external devices via our domain authenticated network. Any drive/folder located on the internal drive ( it's partitioned into 3, C$, D$ and E$) are accessible from any other computer on our network, but all external devices be it Administrator access (//computer/F$, G$, et.al.) or via shares (//computer/My Videos (this folder is located on a 2TB Western Digital HD assigned DISK1, F$) are access denied to permissions.

These external drives/folders/shares have but one permission assigned to the drive, folders and files (domain/username) as full ownership and privileges, the same as on the internal drive, partitions, folders and drives.

Since this is a dual-boot system, I can simply reboot into Windows 7 Professional and every drive, folder, file and share becomes accessible via any computer on our domain as long as I'm either authenticated on that computer as domain/username or access said drives/files/shares using my domain credentials that are the ownership/permissions of all my drives, both internal and external.

So something in Windows 8 is blocking all network shares to external drives with permission errors.

I've changed Group Policies, Administrator Rights, shared whole drives, etc., all to no avail.

Does anyone here have a reason why Windows 8 policies block external drive access and hopefully a fix so I can keep my PC on Windows 8? I must have access to all drives from the entire network for backups, programs and media files and until this Windows 8 issue can be resolved I'm limited to staying on Windows 7.

Thanks in advance for any assistance and/or suggestions to solutions.

Cole

Have you tried working with the Lanman authentication levels?

Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Local Security Policy

Local Policies - Security Options

Network security: LAN Manager authentication level
Set to Send LM & NTLM responses only

Set the Minimum session security for NTLM SSP
Disable Require 128-bit encryption

chev65 said:

Have you tried working with the Lanman authentication levels?

Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Local Security Policy

Local Policies - Security Options

Network security: LAN Manager authentication level
Set to Send LM & NTLM responses only

Set the Minimum session security for NTLM SSP
Disable Require 128-bit encryption

The screen shots below should be helpful.

Reboot all machines after making the adjustment.

I'm assuming that you have tried Adding Everyone to the drives security settings and have it shared with the sharing tab as well.

Click to expand...

Thanks for your quick response, chev65. Once reading it it felt like this could be an answer, but unfortunately this setting is grayed out, and the link provided sends me to Microsoft which states the changes I want to make are for another version of Windows and don't apply to Windows 8. Here is the window and link:



Client, service, and program issues can occur if you change security settings and user rights assignments

Following this link showed me another link saying "Visit the Windows 8 Solution Center" which I followed. This new page sent me to another link for technical assistance: Microsoft Support

Additional links contained "Files, folders, and online storage" which opened additional links one of which was "Resolving access denied errors." The first solution reads "Access is denied mapping to a drive."

Here is that link: Access is denied mapping to a drive - Microsoft Community

On this page are several solutions given by Support Engineers, and I'm giving them a go one at a time to see which, if any, solve my problem. The first I'm trying is the first in line, making a registry change. The original poster said this solved the issue for her.

I'll post here any results I obtain.

Fingers are crossed.

Well, sadly, none of the solutions posted have allowed me to access external drives via our domain network PCs, only the internal drive shares.

Back to square one.

Are you saying that the lanman auth. level and the disable encryption were not adjustable?

I'm asking because these are the settings that tend to have an effect with older servers and NAS box's.

Are you using Windows 8 but not Windows 8 Pro?

chev65 said:

Are you saying that the lanman auth. level and the disable encryption were not adjustable?

I'm asking because these are the settings that tend to have an effect with older servers and NAS box's.

Are you using Windows 8 but not Windows 8 Pro?

Click to expand...

That is correct. They were grayed out and unchangeable. A link on the settings window sent me to the locations I posted above, and onward to 2 different solutions, which unfortunately didn't solve my issue.

My external drives are NTFS, and the OS is Windows 8 Enterprise x64, the version our university has purchased for the staff.

It is also my guess why we've just completed HUGE changes to our authenticating proxy so that all of Win8 will actually connect to the internet. There's been tremendous issues with winHTTP connectivity of Win 8 apps, store, windows update, etc., and since our engineers upgraded and reconfigured the proxy, my Win8 PCs run virtually smoothly to the internet.

With Windows 8 Pro I seem to have access to all those settings.

Yes as usual, the increased security measures do tend to create problems with deployment.

I'm not familiar with the Enterprise version but I always assumed it would have access to those adjustments.

I'm thinking those security settings must be locked down by default through the Group Policy Editor.

I'd have to find a way to get to those settings if it were me.

Come to think of it, I've seen similar complaints about gaining access or reaching the internet through certain types of proxy's.

I, too, believe these settings are controlled by the Group Policy which get configured when I join our domain. However, something additional is happening through updates because when I first installed Win8 I could change the screen saver wait time. Now after the many updates applied to the OS that ability no longer exists. I haven't had time to sit down and research each of the multiple packages installed to see which might cause it. No matter what number I put in the Wait box it goes back to 15 minutes.

Trying to circumvent this change I went into Group Policy Editor and enabled the screen saver and screen saver time, changed the setting to 6600 seconds (110 minutes) and this now showed 110 minutes in the screen saver wait box. But after 15 minutes the screen saver kicked in. Oh JOY!!

I'm feeling more and more with each day of using Win 8 that it's a completely new beast from the one I've been an engineer with for 20 years, and that even Microsoft doesn't completely know how to use their own creation (this being based from the numerous responses to numerous issues posted by MS Techs on their forums.)

cmcole101 said:

I, too, believe these settings are controlled by the Group Policy which get configured when I join our domain. However, something additional is happening through updates because when I first installed Win8 I could change the screen saver wait time. Now after the many updates applied to the OS that ability no longer exists. I haven't had time to sit down and research each of the multiple packages installed to see which might cause it. No matter what number I put in the Wait box it goes back to 15 minutes.

Trying to circumvent this change I went into Group Policy Editor and enabled the screen saver and screen saver time, changed the setting to 6600 seconds (110 minutes) and this now showed 110 minutes in the screen saver wait box. But after 15 minutes the screen saver kicked in. Oh JOY!!

I'm feeling more and more with each day of using Win 8 that it's a completely new beast from the one I've been an engineer with for 20 years, and that even Microsoft doesn't completely know how to use their own creation (this being based from the numerous responses to numerous issues posted by MS Techs on their forums.)

Click to expand...

I'd say that as long as this machine is in this Domain and handcuffed by the GPE, you won't be having much say about what that machine can do. You may need to let the Admin IT know what's going on.

You can see in this latest thread that using the same Local Security settings for Lanman worked to allow access to an external drive not to mention Server 03.

http://www.eightforums.com/network-...8-windows-8-computer-cant-see-w2k-server.html

http://www.eightforums.com/network-sharing/18134-windows-8-pc-cant-see-network-drive.html

chev65 said:

I'd say that as long as this machine is in this Domain and handcuffed by the GPE, you won't be having much say about what that machine can do. You may need to let the Admin IT know what's going on.

Click to expand...

Most likely you are correct. With Windows 7 I've been successful at making registry and GPE tweaks to keep my PC doing what I want it to do as the local administrator over the network admin, but Windows 8 is too different from all my previous schooling in Windows. This doesn't mean I'm giving up though. LOL Come Hell or high water I'm going to figure out how this new OS makes these settings and how to reconfigure them.

As for communicating with our IT staff, I live in Thailand working on a 35,000-person university campus, and very few speak English, and my Thai is nowhere near extensive enough to talk tech with them. As it has been in my 8 years here, most of the foreign staff, and many of the Thai staff, would come to me to help them fix their PCs since the local faculty IT staff are near useless if the PC is in English. So I'm virtually on my own to figure out these external device network shares permission errors.