B
BrendanEvanicki
Guest
NOTE: All This resulted out of access to Network Share Folders
If I change to the correct time from: 1) the windows system tray clock or 2) from the Command Prompt (Run as Administrator) using the TIME command to enter a military time. The time between Windows and he Bios will not be the same and off by five hours behind or ahead. (eg. Windows Clock 4:00pm, BIOS Time 9:00pm) If I change to the correct time in the BIOS the time will not be the same in Windows(eg. BIOS Time 4:00pm, Windows Clock 11:00am). I ran a full scan on my antivirus and malware software and no virus was found. I can't help but wonder if there is a service or other reason that this link is there but recording five hours off. I can't enter any timezone in the Bios only the date and time but in windows it is correctly set to Eastern Standard Time. I thought of the Microsoft Fixit Tool but is not supported nor can it be found to download, so how can I fix this?
===================
While you may have a solution to reply with for the issue above, please indulge me by reading the entry below. Although it may seem rather a long read, I like to share it with you. You may find it interesting and give clues to causes for other issues that might not be easy to find. I compounded my dreaded two week experience to less than a 7 minute read. If these entries are individual issues and there are fixes please share them with a reply. Thank you.
---
I came to discover this problem above during the course of researching and recommendations from help sites to troubleshooting the issues I have with the network share of a folder on HOMEPC-1 and the need to create an image of a laptop to this folder using a bootable CD with AOMEI Backupper (free image software). Eventually at the end of troubleshooting, somewhere on the Microsoft Community, some users swore that the fix was simple. All that was needed is to manually enter the correct Date/Time and Timezone. My case is different. Either the File/Sharing feature in Windows 7 and later is broken or something along the way broke this feature because in XP, sharing wasn't a problem to setup or use. Below I'm going to explain what I was working on before I eventually started having problems that led me here to post this question above:
On my Home Nework I have two Windows 7 Professional PC's and one XP Laptop (Computer Names and Users are fictional for privacy):
1st PC NAME: THEHOMEPC <This PC is the first PC that Joined the Homegroup and has a printer attached
then months later the:
2nd PC NAME: HOMEPC-1 <This PC joined the Homegroup and has a Share Folder called C:\IMAGE.
*for the share folder, Everyone with Read Only access is added by default. I checked on: Full Control and Write access.
3rd PC NAME: HP110LAPTOP <This laptop joined the Homegroup after upgrading to Windows 7 and I need to make an image of it.
On THEHOMEPC the administrator account is PETEROn HOMEPC-1 the administrator account is USEROn HP110LAPTOP the administrator account is THETECH.
I received an HP110-1025DX Windows XP Laptop with 1gb Ram which I upgraded to 2gb Ram. I wanted to revive this laptop with other alternative OS's so I successfully created an image file of the XP laptop to the share folder: \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE using AOMEI Backupper's Share/NAS Management using the IP address and share folder name: \\192.168.x.x\IMAGE. At this time HP110LAPTOP was not part of the HOMEGROUP.
At this point I started researching alternative free OS's and tried different Linux Distros and Android Phoenix OS on the laptop. The claim is that older computers and laptops with an x86 32bit, x86 64bit architecture could perform nearly as the latest Windows computer. You can test the operating system by booting from a CD or USB stick you created from the ISO image. I had no luck creating a Live-CD but was able to create a bootable USB stick. I downloaded software like BalenaEtcher and Rufus which are tools for creating a bootable USB drive from the ISO image. From this media you can boot and test the operating system without installing it or with some options you can choose to install to a partition or to a folder in your current OS.
After all the testing on the laptop, I did not detect issues with the Date and Time or the shared folder since I was able to create an image of the laptop to \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE. I then decided to delete the entire drive and install Windows 7 Professional with all the windows updates, antivirus, web browsers and applications. Then it was time to create an image file of the laptop to \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE. I started to get a network error message that the network path could not be found from AOMEI Backupper software when trying to setup the target location through AOMEI's Share/NAS Management. Using the IP or name: \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE or \\192.168.x.x\IMAGE and entering the user account (USER) and password that exists on HOMEPC-1 but it did not work. It kept asking to enter the correct credentials and to check if the network is functioning correctly.
I tested the shared folder using the file explorer inside Windows 7. I clicked on Network and out came four computer names: THEHOMEPC, HOMEPC-1, HP110LAPTOP and MYSHARE. I clicked on the HOMEPC-1 and a popup screen showing a red progress bar and "checking credentials" quickly disappears and a window security window appears: Login User and Password, the bottom says login failure. This window appeared once and never again.
I still did not notice the Date and Time as a problem because it was correct, including the timezone (EST). I thought maybe the naming convention of the computer name was an issue. Perhaps I wasn't suppose to use a dash or any other symbols. It was recommended on help sites and Microsoft when naming a computer certain characters should not be used only capital letters with no spaces (different versions of Windows behaved differently to this) so I named HOMEPC-1 with: HOMEPC1. Still the network errors in AOMEI and in Windows continued; no more windows security prompts for User and Password and constant network error messages: "Windows cannot access \\HOMEPC1: check the spelling of the name. Otherwise....." Not even the diagnose option could not find any problems and not even all the options in "Troubleshoot Problems" under Network and Sharing Center found. anything. I would change the computer name to HOMEPC2 and tried the share folder again and nothing worked. I change it to HOMEPC3 and still did not work. Every time I changed the computer name and used file manager to check the Network for visible computers, the computer I changed showed all the names it had: HOMEPC-1, HOMEPC1, HOMEPC2 and HOMEPC3 plus the other names, THEHOMEPC, HP110LAPTOP and MYSHARE.
I thought the problem was windows does not see the real computer name somehow. Maybe something is broken in the registry. I am still in a Homegroup. I can test and access the shares on the Laptop and THEHOMEPC and vice versa by entering login credentials which I am prompted for but will not work for HOMEPC3. This is the same PC that I am targeting my image to the C:\IMAGE folder. Under any computer names I created for this pc, the share folder could not be accessed inside Windows or outside from AOMEI backupper, I am still getting network errors as before. Somewhere on a Help site, it was suggested that the reason for seeing all the names for this single pc is that all the computers that had joined the HOMEGROUP had a list of all the computers (computer names) that joined the Homegroup. I you renamed a computer and viewed the new name and recent name is because the list on other computers have a list of the recent name. The fix is having all the computers manually dis-join from the Homegroup would clear the list and stop the listing of recent names given to any computer on the Homegroup viewed under the Network. Each computer would require these actions to be performed one at a time.
At this point I searched the registry for all the computer names I created for this pc. It seemed it recorded something about each name. There was even an entry like, Last Computer Name of the computers last known name. So I decided to rename the computer using its last known name, restarted the computer and rechecked the registry. The instances of the former name started to lessen. I repeated the steps backward until the computer name HOMEPC-1 was registered, the very first name when Windows 7 professional was installed. I retested the share folder and still received network access errors. I checked the registry and found that the computer name was HOMEPC-1 but the Last Computer Name known was HOMEPC1. Any of those recent names that appeared as a value I deleted as long as there wasn't an entry being a Computer Name or Last Computer Name. Now I am thinking that the dash is the problem but I don't know how to fix it. So I dis-join all the PC's and the Laptop from the Homegroup. I retest the share folders and it still doesn't work.
In all that testing, renaming the computer and dis-joining all the computers from the Homegroup, I've tried different variations of on/off setting options under > Network and Sharing Center > Change advanced sharing settings. Rebooted the computer and still with no results. That includes not getting a Window Security Prompt to enter a User and Password for HOMEPC-1 to access a share folder. This is the only PC you can't access from any computer.
I've tried creating the same administrator user accounts and passwords on HOMEPC-1 and the laptop that should have automatically given my credentials for access but continued to get the same network errors.
I opened Command Prompts (Run as Administrator) on all computers, pinging other computers by their IP's with no problems. I tried pinging using there computer names with no problems. All computers replied to the test and still no network access. It's odd though that there was a suffix name when pinging the computer names. Eg. I type: ping hp110laptop and the result begins with: Pinging hp110laptop.home. If I dis-joined from the Homegroup why would there be a suffix ".home" and the end of hp110laptop?
Then last but not least, I came to read some replies to someone having issues that are similar to mine where a share folder could not be accessed using the name of the target computer(eg. \\HOMEPC-1). I lost the exact page but I know I was on the Microsoft Community. One reply had several long fixes involving the use of secpol.msc and changing the Network Security: LAN Manager or something like that but not before starting there reply with, "Doesn't anyone check for answers!" but as I read on it seemed that out of the other replies, they were very satisfied with the help from one person that suggested the fix was simple and that was to manually change the date and time and timezone in Windows and then the source computer could see the targets share (all computers date/time and timezones must be current), including seeing a prompt for user name and password. Lots and lots of replies thanking and claiming that this fixed the problem including making the change in the BIOS would also fix the problem.
So I tried clearing the CMOS which would clear any passwords and settings in the BIOS and reset them to factory settings. Clearing them for my PC required the user manual to show where on the motherboard were the jumpers are located. I followed the procedure to reset my motherboard's CMOS. I did not adjust the time or date. I went into windows which had the wrong time that did not match in the BIOS. I clicked on the Windows system tray clock, clicked on Change Date and Time Settings, clicked on Internet Time Tab, clicked Change Settings, Clicked Update Now button to update Date, Time from the Server : time.windows.com. With the Timezone already set to EST. I Clicked OK twice. Date/Time and Timezone entries are current and correct. I reboot check the BIOS Date and Time settings and the clock is minus five hours. So this is a big problem. I don't know whats broken or if a new virus has caused this problem.
I am glad they had great results with their network shares on their home or work networks but my case is different, as I said. If anyone can pin point after two weeks of work from the beginning to end could find where the problems might be, I would appreciate it. The scenario above might be individual stand alone issues with separate solutions but I wish someone can help me fix HOMEPC-1 with it's networking issues. I don't what to rebuild and reinstall everything. It takes hours if not a day or two depending on a system. If someone can help me perhaps in the registry or at the command prompt what to check for or to clear all the recent computer names assigned to this PC or entries causing this problem would be great. I never had issues with share folders in XP but now with Windows 7 and the later, it seems something can be broken or is there now a virus out there that cause the BIOS and Windows not to register the same Date/Time and Time-zones? Thank you.
Continue reading...
If I change to the correct time from: 1) the windows system tray clock or 2) from the Command Prompt (Run as Administrator) using the TIME command to enter a military time. The time between Windows and he Bios will not be the same and off by five hours behind or ahead. (eg. Windows Clock 4:00pm, BIOS Time 9:00pm) If I change to the correct time in the BIOS the time will not be the same in Windows(eg. BIOS Time 4:00pm, Windows Clock 11:00am). I ran a full scan on my antivirus and malware software and no virus was found. I can't help but wonder if there is a service or other reason that this link is there but recording five hours off. I can't enter any timezone in the Bios only the date and time but in windows it is correctly set to Eastern Standard Time. I thought of the Microsoft Fixit Tool but is not supported nor can it be found to download, so how can I fix this?
===================
While you may have a solution to reply with for the issue above, please indulge me by reading the entry below. Although it may seem rather a long read, I like to share it with you. You may find it interesting and give clues to causes for other issues that might not be easy to find. I compounded my dreaded two week experience to less than a 7 minute read. If these entries are individual issues and there are fixes please share them with a reply. Thank you.
---
I came to discover this problem above during the course of researching and recommendations from help sites to troubleshooting the issues I have with the network share of a folder on HOMEPC-1 and the need to create an image of a laptop to this folder using a bootable CD with AOMEI Backupper (free image software). Eventually at the end of troubleshooting, somewhere on the Microsoft Community, some users swore that the fix was simple. All that was needed is to manually enter the correct Date/Time and Timezone. My case is different. Either the File/Sharing feature in Windows 7 and later is broken or something along the way broke this feature because in XP, sharing wasn't a problem to setup or use. Below I'm going to explain what I was working on before I eventually started having problems that led me here to post this question above:
On my Home Nework I have two Windows 7 Professional PC's and one XP Laptop (Computer Names and Users are fictional for privacy):
1st PC NAME: THEHOMEPC <This PC is the first PC that Joined the Homegroup and has a printer attached
then months later the:
2nd PC NAME: HOMEPC-1 <This PC joined the Homegroup and has a Share Folder called C:\IMAGE.
*for the share folder, Everyone with Read Only access is added by default. I checked on: Full Control and Write access.
3rd PC NAME: HP110LAPTOP <This laptop joined the Homegroup after upgrading to Windows 7 and I need to make an image of it.
On THEHOMEPC the administrator account is PETEROn HOMEPC-1 the administrator account is USEROn HP110LAPTOP the administrator account is THETECH.
I received an HP110-1025DX Windows XP Laptop with 1gb Ram which I upgraded to 2gb Ram. I wanted to revive this laptop with other alternative OS's so I successfully created an image file of the XP laptop to the share folder: \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE using AOMEI Backupper's Share/NAS Management using the IP address and share folder name: \\192.168.x.x\IMAGE. At this time HP110LAPTOP was not part of the HOMEGROUP.
At this point I started researching alternative free OS's and tried different Linux Distros and Android Phoenix OS on the laptop. The claim is that older computers and laptops with an x86 32bit, x86 64bit architecture could perform nearly as the latest Windows computer. You can test the operating system by booting from a CD or USB stick you created from the ISO image. I had no luck creating a Live-CD but was able to create a bootable USB stick. I downloaded software like BalenaEtcher and Rufus which are tools for creating a bootable USB drive from the ISO image. From this media you can boot and test the operating system without installing it or with some options you can choose to install to a partition or to a folder in your current OS.
After all the testing on the laptop, I did not detect issues with the Date and Time or the shared folder since I was able to create an image of the laptop to \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE. I then decided to delete the entire drive and install Windows 7 Professional with all the windows updates, antivirus, web browsers and applications. Then it was time to create an image file of the laptop to \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE. I started to get a network error message that the network path could not be found from AOMEI Backupper software when trying to setup the target location through AOMEI's Share/NAS Management. Using the IP or name: \\HOMEPC-1\IMAGE or \\192.168.x.x\IMAGE and entering the user account (USER) and password that exists on HOMEPC-1 but it did not work. It kept asking to enter the correct credentials and to check if the network is functioning correctly.
I tested the shared folder using the file explorer inside Windows 7. I clicked on Network and out came four computer names: THEHOMEPC, HOMEPC-1, HP110LAPTOP and MYSHARE. I clicked on the HOMEPC-1 and a popup screen showing a red progress bar and "checking credentials" quickly disappears and a window security window appears: Login User and Password, the bottom says login failure. This window appeared once and never again.
I still did not notice the Date and Time as a problem because it was correct, including the timezone (EST). I thought maybe the naming convention of the computer name was an issue. Perhaps I wasn't suppose to use a dash or any other symbols. It was recommended on help sites and Microsoft when naming a computer certain characters should not be used only capital letters with no spaces (different versions of Windows behaved differently to this) so I named HOMEPC-1 with: HOMEPC1. Still the network errors in AOMEI and in Windows continued; no more windows security prompts for User and Password and constant network error messages: "Windows cannot access \\HOMEPC1: check the spelling of the name. Otherwise....." Not even the diagnose option could not find any problems and not even all the options in "Troubleshoot Problems" under Network and Sharing Center found. anything. I would change the computer name to HOMEPC2 and tried the share folder again and nothing worked. I change it to HOMEPC3 and still did not work. Every time I changed the computer name and used file manager to check the Network for visible computers, the computer I changed showed all the names it had: HOMEPC-1, HOMEPC1, HOMEPC2 and HOMEPC3 plus the other names, THEHOMEPC, HP110LAPTOP and MYSHARE.
I thought the problem was windows does not see the real computer name somehow. Maybe something is broken in the registry. I am still in a Homegroup. I can test and access the shares on the Laptop and THEHOMEPC and vice versa by entering login credentials which I am prompted for but will not work for HOMEPC3. This is the same PC that I am targeting my image to the C:\IMAGE folder. Under any computer names I created for this pc, the share folder could not be accessed inside Windows or outside from AOMEI backupper, I am still getting network errors as before. Somewhere on a Help site, it was suggested that the reason for seeing all the names for this single pc is that all the computers that had joined the HOMEGROUP had a list of all the computers (computer names) that joined the Homegroup. I you renamed a computer and viewed the new name and recent name is because the list on other computers have a list of the recent name. The fix is having all the computers manually dis-join from the Homegroup would clear the list and stop the listing of recent names given to any computer on the Homegroup viewed under the Network. Each computer would require these actions to be performed one at a time.
At this point I searched the registry for all the computer names I created for this pc. It seemed it recorded something about each name. There was even an entry like, Last Computer Name of the computers last known name. So I decided to rename the computer using its last known name, restarted the computer and rechecked the registry. The instances of the former name started to lessen. I repeated the steps backward until the computer name HOMEPC-1 was registered, the very first name when Windows 7 professional was installed. I retested the share folder and still received network access errors. I checked the registry and found that the computer name was HOMEPC-1 but the Last Computer Name known was HOMEPC1. Any of those recent names that appeared as a value I deleted as long as there wasn't an entry being a Computer Name or Last Computer Name. Now I am thinking that the dash is the problem but I don't know how to fix it. So I dis-join all the PC's and the Laptop from the Homegroup. I retest the share folders and it still doesn't work.
In all that testing, renaming the computer and dis-joining all the computers from the Homegroup, I've tried different variations of on/off setting options under > Network and Sharing Center > Change advanced sharing settings. Rebooted the computer and still with no results. That includes not getting a Window Security Prompt to enter a User and Password for HOMEPC-1 to access a share folder. This is the only PC you can't access from any computer.
I've tried creating the same administrator user accounts and passwords on HOMEPC-1 and the laptop that should have automatically given my credentials for access but continued to get the same network errors.
I opened Command Prompts (Run as Administrator) on all computers, pinging other computers by their IP's with no problems. I tried pinging using there computer names with no problems. All computers replied to the test and still no network access. It's odd though that there was a suffix name when pinging the computer names. Eg. I type: ping hp110laptop and the result begins with: Pinging hp110laptop.home. If I dis-joined from the Homegroup why would there be a suffix ".home" and the end of hp110laptop?
Then last but not least, I came to read some replies to someone having issues that are similar to mine where a share folder could not be accessed using the name of the target computer(eg. \\HOMEPC-1). I lost the exact page but I know I was on the Microsoft Community. One reply had several long fixes involving the use of secpol.msc and changing the Network Security: LAN Manager or something like that but not before starting there reply with, "Doesn't anyone check for answers!" but as I read on it seemed that out of the other replies, they were very satisfied with the help from one person that suggested the fix was simple and that was to manually change the date and time and timezone in Windows and then the source computer could see the targets share (all computers date/time and timezones must be current), including seeing a prompt for user name and password. Lots and lots of replies thanking and claiming that this fixed the problem including making the change in the BIOS would also fix the problem.
So I tried clearing the CMOS which would clear any passwords and settings in the BIOS and reset them to factory settings. Clearing them for my PC required the user manual to show where on the motherboard were the jumpers are located. I followed the procedure to reset my motherboard's CMOS. I did not adjust the time or date. I went into windows which had the wrong time that did not match in the BIOS. I clicked on the Windows system tray clock, clicked on Change Date and Time Settings, clicked on Internet Time Tab, clicked Change Settings, Clicked Update Now button to update Date, Time from the Server : time.windows.com. With the Timezone already set to EST. I Clicked OK twice. Date/Time and Timezone entries are current and correct. I reboot check the BIOS Date and Time settings and the clock is minus five hours. So this is a big problem. I don't know whats broken or if a new virus has caused this problem.
I am glad they had great results with their network shares on their home or work networks but my case is different, as I said. If anyone can pin point after two weeks of work from the beginning to end could find where the problems might be, I would appreciate it. The scenario above might be individual stand alone issues with separate solutions but I wish someone can help me fix HOMEPC-1 with it's networking issues. I don't what to rebuild and reinstall everything. It takes hours if not a day or two depending on a system. If someone can help me perhaps in the registry or at the command prompt what to check for or to clear all the recent computer names assigned to this PC or entries causing this problem would be great. I never had issues with share folders in XP but now with Windows 7 and the later, it seems something can be broken or is there now a virus out there that cause the BIOS and Windows not to register the same Date/Time and Time-zones? Thank you.
Continue reading...