Solved Share a drive in Win 8.1

When i attempt to share any of my drives (physical or virtual) on my Win 8.1 machine I receive a message, "This drive cannot be shared". This machine is a member of a Homegroup and I have read access to/from this machine.

As I am attempting to share a drive I am using advanced share and have included homegroup users in the list I want to share to.

UPDATE:
I have now managed to share the drives on the Win 8 machine, however when i look at Homegroup in Windows explorer I can see the shared drives of the Win 7 machines but when I click on them it says I don't have permission despite having put Homeusers in the permissions list of both the sharing tab and permissions tab of Shared Drive/properties.

shag00 said:

When i attempt to share any of my drives (physical or virtual) on my Win 8.1 machine I receive a message, "This drive cannot be shared". This machine is a member of a Homegroup and I have read access to/from this machine.

As I am attempting to share a drive I am using advanced share and have included homegroup users in the list I want to share to.

UPDATE:
I have now managed to share the drives on the Win 8 machine, however when i look at Homegroup in Windows explorer I can see the shared drives of the Win 7 machines but when I click on them it says I don't have permission despite having put Homeusers in the permissions list of both the sharing tab and permissions tab of Shared Drive/properties.

Click to expand...

Adding names to the Share list only works if those Users have accounts on the same PC.

The link below shows you how to share drives, which is done through the C:>Users folder Security tab by adding check marks to the permission settings for the Everyone share.

HDD sharing - Windows 7 Help Forums

Chev65,

thank your for reply, I have continued to try and fix this issue and have stumbled upon other problems which are probably best addressed in a new thread, however I would like to share with you that I am sharing a drive (read/write) without read/write security or sharing permissions being assigned to Everyone. These are screenshots from the Win 8.1 machine.


This is sharing tab of properties, the share button in the top section is always greyed out.


This is the sharing tab of properties showing details of Everyone. This is read only and if I delete Everyone Windows automatically adds it again.


This is the sharing tab of properties showing details of HomeUsers.


This is the security tab of properties.

You see in Windows you really don't want to share a drive from the root, in fact the default setting is to share from the Users folder not the drive letter itself. There is a big difference between the two as sharing the entire drive is a security risk and not advised.

If you look at the link I posted you can see what I mean, you do the sharing from the Users folder, this is the correct way to share a drive, the way you are doing now is a good example of how not to do this.

You should remove the remove the Homegroup User entry from the list in the Security tab. Unless you have some special reason for this.

Then you should follow the directions in the link I posted which is to share the drive from the example C: >Users folder, this is the way you are supposed to share a drive. You need to right click the Users folder then choose properties.

I should also point out that regardless of what you added to the drive's security tab on the Windows 7 machine, the drive will still not be sharable unless the C or which ever drive this is, example C:>Users folder, is shared through the Sharing tab per the lower picture in the first link I posted earlier.

This machine acts as a server and has an incoming VPN connection to it which is why I don't want to give write permissions to everyone, as another layer of hacker protection. The drive itself is a virtual drive so negating some of the reasons for not sharing roots. Currently there are no problems with this shared drive, self created or otherwise as per my previous update. The above post was merely to let you and other users know of another method of sharing a drive.

Also, what are the disadvantages of having Homegroup Users in the Security tab?

shag00 said:

This machine acts as a server and has an incoming VPN connection to it which is why I don't want to give write permissions to everyone, as another layer of hacker protection. The drive itself is a virtual drive so negating some of the reasons for not sharing roots. Currently there are no problems with this shared drive, self created or otherwise as per my previous update. The above post was merely to let you and other users know of another method of sharing a drive.

Also, what are the disadvantages of having Homegroup Users in the Security tab?

Click to expand...

Actually sharing from the root of the drive is a hackers paradise but live and learn.

I also had no way of knowing what your particular requirements were so I showed the safest way to share the drive's User folder which only allows for access to personal folders but not the system files which is what happens when you share the root.

So as far as winging it goes, do your best, when people ask for advice I always assume they want the correct way to share drives, the way you did this isn't something I would normally advise because you are sharing from the root of the drive.