↓
 
Home→Technical→you might not have permission to use this network resource

you might not have permission to use this network resource

Computer Aid Posted on by

This is something that has always bothered me, yet I never really investigated it until now.

It always bugged me that shared folders would become inaccessible ie, you get the message: “you might not have permission to use this network resource” when you make some change to network settings. The annoying thing about this is that it would all fix itself at some unknown time in the future (from 10 minutes, up to 10 hours).

Well this happened when I changed a customers PC from fixed IP to DHCP. After that, none of the other computers in the office would be able to see the shared folders on the main PC… It all came right after a few hours (after I had gone).

Well, the next time it happened, I used: ipconfig /flushdns (and followed by a related command: ipconfig /registerdns).

It seems to work sometimes… yet other times, it seems to have no effect.

It seems to have no effect if the network settings have been corrupted by an infection… in which case, a reinstall of windows seems to be the only option 🙁

Comments

you might not have permission to use this network resource — 3 Comments

  1. Actually in Windows XP the network settings can be reset to their freshly installed settings. Look at the following site: http://www.xp-smoker.com/freeware.html and download XP TCP/IP Repair. This will allow you to reset the TCP/IP stack or repair Winsock. In most cases of problems with the networking this has been an easy fix for me. Hopefully it will be of use to you too. This even fixes most problems that happen when getting rid of various malware.

    Also, I assume all the machines are in the same workgroup or domain. Is the administrator password the same on all machines? If not this can help. Also, having the same accounts on all the computers unless they are all members of a domain would help. Also, is this XP Home or Pro? There is a setting in Group Policy (XP Pro) which defaults to guest only, but needs to be set as Classic which I will detail more below (2000 defaults to this).

    Group Policy (gpedit.msc)
    Local Computer Policy
    Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Local Policies > Security Options

    Network Access: Sharing and security model for local accounts

    Classic – local users authenticate as themselves

    (this needs to be set to properly have access to shared files, but don’t forget permissions and security settings on the folders too)

    The annoying thing is this is usually set to guest only which gives you very limited access to the files shared; if at all. Hopefully this may be of help. It is also possible to set this on an XP Home box with a registry setting. If you need this let me know. Good luck.

  2. Yep, I do have a tcpip repair program (there are a few around).

    I usually use it to repair TCP after an infection.

    I don’t want to use tcpip repair when I often see network connections “fix themselves” after a few hours…

    I make sure the domains are the same. The Admin passwords are the same (usually just blank!).

    I think I tried changing the group policy once (but it didn’t help)… but I’ll try it again.

    I guess I just see this happen often enough, that I think: there must be a better than to try 5 different techniques, cross fingers, and hope it all hangs together.

↑