"mike" wrote in message ...
On 3/22/2015 1:23 PM, Snuffy "Hub Cap" McKinney wrote:
Yes, I know it's OT. I could not find any newsgroups on Windows 7 or 8, or even any networking groups except for old OS. But any suggestions of other forums are appreciated.

An now.... on to the sob story....

Question about accessing other computers on small office network.....

I recently bought a PC with 8.1, got all the updates and then connected to the office Netgear router via wired ethernet. Not using wireless for this. No problem accessing from any computer to the other 3. Passwords were not set -- that is, when it asks for a password, we leave the pw field blank, hit 'enter' and it connected right away.

Then one day, I tried to access the older computers from the 8.1 and it would not accept a blank password. Then I entered the administrator pw and same problem. I suspect someone entered a password they thought was needed and it accept it as a new password -- but don't know. Nobody is admitting to it.

Anyway, I checked that nothing had been changed on the other 3 computers, and all connect fine to each other with no password needed as always.

So it sounds like the problem is with the new 8.1.

Sorry for long story.... I wanted to be sure all the info was out there for any helpful PC gurus.

My hunch is I should be able to reset the passwords in the 8.1 machine, but the 8.1 help menu is no help so far, and is extremely difficult for me to use. Struck out also searchiing online and at microsoft. com.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! (Suggestions like "smash the machine with a Pepsi bottle", or "run over it with your Chevy", are already on my list as defaults....)

Thanks in advance!

Snuffy

What OS are the other computers running?

Win2000 on all others

In general, networks don't like to run without passwords.
Put the same username and password on all your machines and the
network should run seamlessly.

I did and all 4 machines worked fine for a few days. Then the Win8.1 machine stopped accepting that PW. I don't know how that could have happened, but resetting the password I hope will do the trick -- if I can figure out how to do it.... The computer came from Frys Electronics with 8.1 on it and no back up DVD. I did buy the 2-3 yr warranty, so that may be the answer to this problem.

I've never had any need to do otherwise, so can't offer any more advice.

There also may be some issues with workgroup vs homegroup.

There is an issue with getting access from older machines.
I had to do this to my win7 machine to give access to a Dell Axim PDA

Open Registry Editor, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Lsa\

Create LMCompatibilityLevel (DWord) and set the value to 1

Thanks, and no offence, but no way I'm messing around with registries. I've done this before and it cane be a real time-waster if something goes wrong.