Scanning to Window 7 Home editions

[KenB]

I know that there are near countless post here about issues scanning to folder on Windows 7 editions, with nearly all brands of MFPs.

Working with a "farmed out" IT guy yesterday, at a small account we have in common, we had 3 Windows 7 Home Premium with that exact problem.

He called one of his coworkers, and he suggested using the "Owner" account, which had no password.

Guess what? Bingo!! That worked! Could it really be that simple?

I'll wait a few days before we call it a win, but it sure looks promising.

[OMD-227]

One thing we have found as well, is Windows 7 has a feature called 'password protected sharing'.
This stops access to shared folders (such as a scan to folder) from external devices.

If you have further scanning troubles to a folder, go into the control panel, network/sharing centre, change advanced sharing settings, then change the password sharing settings.

Worth a shot...... otherwise, KenB is da man!

[TheOwl]

Turning off the password protection works a treat.

The big one that I have found is that when connecting to a network for the first time, Windows 7 will ask for the user to identify the network. If the user selects public, then sharing of folders is turned off. This is because Windows 7 sees a public network as a WiFi hotspot or something similar where other people that might be unknown to you are using the network as well. The firewall also shuts down alot of other features. If you select work or home as the network, then the folder sharing is turned off and can then be used.

Another thing I have been doing is enabling the Administrator account on the PC. Because the Administrator has god mode to the machine, then you can simply use that. I use the following command in the prompt to enable the administrator account easily:

net user administrator /active:yes

Then just set a password for the administrator and use those credentials on the PC. By default, the administrator account is disabled for the pure fact that all newer Windows OS's have the user Administrator. This saved hackers time in trying to guess which account to use to break in with. Now with Windows 2008 SBS / R2 and 7, the administrator account isn't enabled to make it harder for the hackers to guess the username to start with, let alone the password. Having just said this, make sure that you use a strong password for the administrator account.

[KenB]

Turning off the password protection works a treat.

The big one that I have found is that when connecting to a network for the first time, Windows 7 will ask for the user to identify the network. If the user selects public, then sharing of folders is turned off. This is because Windows 7 sees a public network as a WiFi hotspot or something similar where other people that might be unknown to you are using the network as well. The firewall also shuts down alot of other features. If you select work or home as the network, then the folder sharing is turned off and can then be used.

Another thing I have been doing is enabling the Administrator account on the PC. Because the Administrator has god mode to the machine, then you can simply use that. I use the following command in the prompt to enable the administrator account easily:

net user administrator /active:yes

Then just set a password for the administrator and use those credentials on the PC. By default, the administrator account is disabled for the pure fact that all newer Windows OS's have the user Administrator. This saved hackers time in trying to guess which account to use to break in with. Now with Windows 2008 SBS / R2 and 7, the administrator account isn't enabled to make it harder for the hackers to guess the username to start with, let alone the password. Having just said this, make sure that you use a strong password for the administrator account.

Thanks, Mr. Owl.

Does this work on the Home versions of Windows 7, though? It seems like a ton of things are absent in Home.

I've had no issues with Pro or Ultimate.

[SCREWTAPE]

One thing we have found as well, is Windows 7 has a feature called 'password protected sharing'.
This stops access to shared folders (such as a scan to folder) from external devices.

If you have further scanning troubles to a folder, go into the control panel, network/sharing centre, change advanced sharing settings, then change the password sharing settings.

Worth a shot...... otherwise, KenB is da man!

This is a +1 answer.

Turned off this function when I was unable to browse into a clients workstation running Windows 7.

Even added the folder path manually for the file path. Until I came across this option.

I was installing a C5030 when I turned off this function and it'd worked.

[TheOwl]

If you are talking about the network identification, then yes, that should also be included in the home edition. Being the home edition, it tries to be more secure and maybe even automatically set Public as the network location.

The Administrator user is available in just about all versions of Windows and that prompt command should work on all versions of Windows from NT4 and up as long as the administrator account exists in the first place (some network admins will remove the local admin account from a PC).

[Brian.Owens]

With any IT staff that has a bit of paranoia... As most do, enabling the admin account is a no no. That is if the business cares about security at all. I usually find that smaller clients don't care but always ask and explain.
If the Location is set to public, you can re-enable the file sharing in the control panel. The file does have to be set to allow each specific user, or everyone, and allow read/write/modify. From another Pc you can type the path in start/run...path then press enter. This will tell you if it is a permissions issue.