[geeks] Windows 7 File & Printer Sharing Nightmare

[Mark Benson]

Hi,

I give you due warning, some of you may vomit when you read the setup we
have here. It's not the best, I'm aware.

I have a real doozy. Windows 7 File and Printer sharing on a peer-to-peer
LAN, all machines are running Windows 7 Pro, the majority are 64-bit, a
couple are 32-bit. Password protected sharing is OFF on all machines (yes,
yes I know) and they are all in the same Workgroup.

The issue is we share printers from 4 PCs to the rest of the LAN (about a
dozen PCs total) mostly due to desk space limitations. At random (as in not
every day, or on every PC), or due to some factor I can't see, some PCs
refuse point blank to talk to each other via Windows sharing. Printing
breaks and everyone starts complaining.

I tried all the usual diagnostics, pings are fine, TCP/IP seems to work
okay, there's no loss of Internet access to anything else that would
suggest an infrastructure failure. We don't use managed switches or filters
inside the LAN that would cripple Windows traffic specifically and, as
stated, some days it works just fine. It's also an issue that never cropped
up running XP, the first time I saw it was between XP and 7 and I assumed
it was just version niggles. It appears it's a problem with Windows 7. It's
not a 64-bit vs. 32-bit driver issue either, as 64-bit to 64-bit machine
comms are failing the majority of the time.

I'm about to hulk smash something. The only suggestions I've seen is that
using no-password sharing in Windows 7 and up is unreliable. Any
experiences?

-- 

Mark Benson