Everything worked just fine, and I had his three remote users set up in about 20 minutes total.

I did have problems on one computer connecting to the shares, but I think that was a Windows networking issue that was independent of Hamachi.

Overall an excellent experience with this software. The only problem now is the aforementioned slow speeds. I have to get these two offices much faster connections...

Usually that's a name-resolution problem. And for workgroups, that's usually a WINS issue. Make sure the computer is set to do (...looks up what it's called...) "Enable NETBIOS over TCP/IP", deep in the advanced TCP settings.

Thanks for all the help so far. At the moment, I'm being driven insane by Windows networking (nothing surprising about that). This is the error I'm getting on two of the computers I'm trying to connect to shares over the VPN:


One computer is running Vista, the other XP. I've tried both with their own workgroup name and with the same as the source network. Both exhibit the same behavior: if you just type in the server address, you can see all the printers and share folders that exist on the server, but as soon as you try to open any of those folder, it hangs for an extremely long time, then comes up with the above error.

Tony, I've tried you recommendation in your last post, but Hamachi started complaining about incorrect adapter settings and couldn't connect to the server at all anymore.

*edit*
Regarding permissions, I don't think that's the issue. I'm testing this all out on a folder that gives full control to Everyone. I've been able to get other computers with similar setups to connect.

For folder sharing to work in Windows, there are at least five things that need to happen:

1. The file sharing feature must be enabled on the computer that's sharing the folder.
2. The folder being shared must have its "Sharing Permissions" set properly.
3. The folder being shared must have its NTFS disk/file permissions set properly.
4. The Windows Firewall must have the correct openings for folder sharing. (This is done for you by default when you enable the sharing feature.)
5. The "Server" service must be running on the computer that's sharing the folder. (This is default on all systems.)

There may be other things that need to be enabled. I've had situations like yours, when I still get errors like you describe even when I've met all of the above conditions. Usually, in times like that, I give up and sneakernet the files.

Thanks for the response.

Those all sound right to me, but they all seem to apply to the server computer. What confuses me is that some computers are able to access the files just fine, even though they're set up the same way (AFAICT) as the computers that are acting up.

To further confuse things, the computer I'm writing this on, one of the problem PCs, WAS able to connect to the shares and view the files for about 5 minutes earlier. But then, just a few minutes later, could not. Ugh.

Make sure you've disabled, er, whatever that protocol is that isn't TCP/IP (NetBEUI?). I don't know whether XP/Vista still have it enabled by default, but machines that have it enabled will, from the point of view of a TCP/IP-orientated sysadmin, quite literally conspire behind your back to confuse you about their name resolution.

Peter

Check your security permissions in addition to the sharing permissions. I know that for my systems to work properly I had to do a song and dance...

The computer in question: Is it on the same LAN as the server, or is it one of the VPN machines?

If the latter, I would suspect brief connectivity drops that mess up the file sharing.

You guys (starting with Tony) are totally right. It was a security permissions thing. I'd set the sharing permissions but not the security ones, which is annoying.

But the major confusion was this: when I set the VPN up initially, I had about four computers connecting to the VPN and the server, and seeing all the files I wanted them to. Between then and today, I had changed absolutely nothing, but now those computers couldn't see those files. It's like something in the computer realized "oh, hey! I forgot that I need to apply the security permissions too! Well lets stop this now, and give off an error message with little to no meaning."

It appears to be working now, but naturally I have no faith in Windows' file sharing. I never did before, though, and this experience hasn't helped.

Windows networking is shite. You can optionally remove the word "networking" from that last sentence...