just discovered weird windows file sharing problem

[PR]

OK here is the situation. i have a small Lenovo pc and i wanted to use it as a media center pc but my tv is old and it only has a composite video in jack just like on the back of all vcrs. because of that i cannot at this time hook up the Lenovo pc to my tv so im currently using it in another room and simply sharing files to a pc that has a composite out on the video card. another words im sharing my entire desktop from the lenovo to this temporary media pc that is hooked up to my tv.

Ok now i will list the technical stuff that may be relevant:

Lenovo pc: windows 7 ultimate 64 bit sp1, linksys wireless G usb adapter. 2tb storage drive ntfs

Temporary media center pc: windows xp pro sp3, netgear wireless g pci adapter, 250gb storage drive ntfs

the folder on Lenovo pc desktop i am sharing fully with everyone on my lan (read, write, change) contains full length movies which i ripped from my own dvds and some i downloaded. 418 files totaling 378gb consisting of a mix of mkv, m4v, mp4, avi and mpg videos.

I have been puzzled by this sharing crap for weeks until today when i decided to try something and it happened to work.

here is the weird problem i encountered. If i share the entire folder with all of 418 files in it the temporary media center pc will only see 362 files. so because of this i went to my lenovo pc and made duplicate copies of the entire folder so now i have 836 files and half of them have a added " Copy." at the end of them as windows 7 adds that to files already in the folder so they are not overwritten. so now i go back to the temp media pc and notice that now the 362 files seen before increased to 726 files or something as i don't remember the exact # and totaling 600+ gigs. on the media pc i delete all of the files with "copy" in them and i go back to the lenovo pc and count and it shows 56 file that i was not able to delete from the temp media pc because they were not visible.

so i decided to split the 418 files into 2 folders with 215 in one and 203 in the other. and now i went to temp media pc and see that out of 215 only 190 are visible and out of 203 172 are visible and the total visible shared files stays the same at 362. so i go back to the Lenovo pc and split up those 2 folders into 4 folders containing these amounts 0 -D (111 files), E - L (104 files), M - S (109 files), T - Z (94 files). this time all files are shown but only if i split them up into smaller groups. WHY?

so now i would like a logical explanation why im not able to share the entire folder of 418 files and have the files visible on the shared pc. this really is weird.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

There are sharing permissions and NTFS permissions. As you are moving files around into different folders, some permissions are being preserved and others are being modified.

Copy Creates, Move Maintains. If you copy a file, it inherits the permissions of the folder its copied into. If you move a file, it maintains the permissions it had in its original location.

I would put all the files in one place, then configure the sharing permissions on the parent folder, then go into NTFS permissions on the parent folder and ensure the rights are configured correctly there also, then select to apply those permissions to all child folders/files.

You should first check what you can see in windows explorer - media center may not be a great test because it typically has to scan the folders to recognize the media, and it doesn't always do that very quickly. Windows explorer will tell you immediately what files you can see and what files you can't, and that will confirm what is a sharing/permissions issue, and what is a media center pc issue.

 

[PR]

The windows 7 machine is all stock. i have not done any weird stuff to it. all folders have stock settings except the ones with the media files. those i simply shared to everyone with read,write and change attributes. all files are visible on the host pc. the network media center pc attached to the tv is stock too with a vanilla windows xp pro sp3.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Can you show a screenshot of the permission settings?

All files are going to be visible on the host PC regardless, but I'm concerned that the account on the network media center PC doesn't have the rights it needs for some of your files.

 

[TempliNocturnus]

I'm guessing you have some files/folders in your media share that are not set to inherit permissions of its parent directory.

To make sure everything is inheriting permissions, ensure permissions are set as desired on the top level directory of your share and run the following command from your Win7 computer:

icacls {share_directory} /inheritance:E /t

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Good advice. That's essentially what I was saying, but you said it much more quickly/clearly, and its a better way to get it done quickly.