Odd file sharing issue...

Something that I just noticed here on our home network, no idea how long it's been this way so have no way of knowing what might have caused this. The particulars:

The LAN network here consists of three systems, primarily... all running WinXP, 2 are Pro the 3rd has Home. They run through an SMC router on their way to the 'net or the internal LAN. The LAN side uses IPX ... simple shares ... so.

The problem machine is my XP Pro system. And here's the problem, I have a folder shared with subfolders within. All shares well, but several of the sub-folders do not show the contents, or all of the contents. Same thing exists when attempting to view from either of the other machines on the network. And it's not exclusive to this particular folder nor filetypes.... hummmm.
So, I take the folder in question and from my machine I copy it over to one of the other machines and it's fine and happy, all files within the subs show up. Joy.
Now if I also go into the shared folder and specifically share one of the subs then the contents will show on the other systems... but that should not be necessary...........

So, file sharing works fine all the way around unless it's a folder on my machine. Then it displays fine and dandy but some files are missing, but they should be there. It's not folder specific nor files type specific.

Pretty much stumped here on this one ... Any help would be appreciated... thx

Hi Abhoth,

Try running the Network Setup Wizard and tell it to connect through a Residential Gateway (router) and see if that fixes it. I've heard from other people with similar reports where network folders appear empty due to one of the security hotfixes (KB885250). This kinda sounds like the issue you are having. If so, I don't know why this happens nor what causes it. I have never had this problem.

Hi ecross and thx for the idea... are we talkin' just on the problem machine??? Or all three???

Did mine and one of the others, and that is how I normally run through the wizard, with that connection type. Still no go ... all three machines are on SP2 fyi.

I imagine only the problem machine since your computer seems or could be effected by this update. It wouldn't hurt to try it on all three. This problem has been reported back in early February 2005 and the solution was to remove the hotfix. It also effects SP2. There has been many updates since then so I don't know if it has been corrected or not.

Tried with no success ... will pull the hotfix and see if that makes a difference.

Well, pulled the hotfix and no love ... WinUpdate wants to put it back out there so let it...

About ready to try the old repair/reinstall but really don't much like that idea. Ran the system file checker too and it did it's thing to no avail...

Just an odd thing ... not a clue why it would show some files but not others... networking things really twitch me! ;-)