# Can't Open Network Drive's Folders (Vista)



## r1ck111 (Sep 22, 2008)

Hi

First thing first I know this is a long question so thank you for reading!

I am absolutely tearing my hair out with this one. I think I am way out of my depths trying to solve it on my own so any help would be appreciated.

I have Windows Vista Home Basic on my laptop which I have just got, I wanted to share files and folders between my existing XP desktop easily, I also need to access them other than at home and to have them permanently available, I really didn't want to leave the desktop on permantly, so I purchased a Network HDD case and installed my own spare hard drive.

I set it up (the network HDD) through the web based program and made a password protected folder on it due to other people accessing it for other files. XP recognized everything, I click on the protected folder on "My Network Places" and it prompts me for a password which I enter and it then forwards me to the contents of that folder, all is well.

Vista!!!! however, shows everything in the "network" folder, great, but, I then click on the password protected folder, it prompts me as you would expect for a password and a user name (although XP fills out the user name for me) I copied what XP put in the user name field (Net-drive\Guest) and then entered the password. No matter what I tried it wouldn't work, after hours and hours and hours oh and hours, of searching on the net, I found out that the local security policy settings needed changing because the HDD must shake hands with an older security protocol to process the password (NTLM 1) where as vista will only use NTLM 2 by default, because Microsoft decided the older protocols are to vulnerable to hacking and made NTLM 2 the only protocol it would use! So absolutely no backward compatibility and that is slightly ironic as some one on another forum pointed out because the only way to use Vista with a machine using an older protocol is to remove the password! completely defeating the said purpose of defaulting vista to only NTLM 2!

So I set about finding out how to change the local security policy settings (located in the control panel\administrative tools) only to find out that they don't include these options with any Vista Home! only the Pro editions. ***! So i found out how to change this through the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Control\Lsa LmCompatibilityLevel). I believe there are several options to choose from (0-3), it was on 3 so I changed it to 2, I went to the folder in question clicked on it, it prompted me, I entered the user name and password and to my surprise it worked! So why the F**k are you on this forum you might ask.

Well.. I tried to open one of the sub-folders that I could now see, clicked on it, it starts to load, it continues loading, loads some more, some more, some time later just a wee more and does absolutely.... nothing! Roughly for about 10-15 minutes. ARGGHHHHH!! The HDD is not working (by that I mean not loading files or anything else) while Vista is supposedly loading, as I can tell from the usage lights on the back. It now gets worse.

So I try to open another folder without a password on it (oh just to let you know there are to main folders on the HDD that I initially created through its software which are shared, one has a password one doesn't), I can get into the folder then as with the password protected folder when I click on one of the sub-folders it just loads and loads and loads and loads..... It never opens it. I thought well hold on it did before it must be the LmCompatibilityLevel setting that I changed, so I changed it back to 3, and for good measure re-booted the system and yes it made no difference. So I went from passwords not working to, well, just not working at all!

I don't know if changing the LmCompatibilityLevel could have then altered some other setting in Vista somehow, or if Vista just tried to punish me for trying to get around buying a Pro version by using the registry.

I think they have appropriately named Windows Vista, because the window your looking through is your monitor and the view your looking at is hell!!!

Now 3 days later, after hours of searching the web and this long description (and partial rant) about what happened, I am begging for help!!!!!!!!!!! Please, Please, Please, Please. HELP ME!!!! There I did it, I feel no lesser of a man. That will happen when it makes me cry. lol

Thank you in advance for any help.

Rick


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