Unsharing folders in Windows 7

The new sharing system in Windows 7 was supposed to make things easier but really just simply messes things up instead, especially when the folder you were sharing is in the Users folder. Google "cannot unshare folder in windows 7" and almost none of the suggestions worked. Luckily I finally managed to find this page that had a suggestion which worked.

Suggestion 1 - Use Computer Management to "Stop Sharing"
This one doesn't work. You are supposed to click on the round Windows start button, right-click on "Computer", select "Manage" and go to "Computer Management -> System Tools -> Shared Folders -> Shares". From here you can see a list of folders you are currently sharing (including admin shares ending with '$') but there's no option to right-click and "Stop Sharing" the folder you want to un-share, at least not for me and a few others apparently.

Suggestion 2 - Select "Share With -> Nobody" in right-click menu
This also doesn't work. You are supposed to select the folder you want to un-share, then right-click on it and choose to "Share with -> Nobody". However if you right-click and select "Properties -> Sharing", you will see that the folder is still shared with the Network Path defined.

Suggestion 3 - Disable the (messed up) "Sharing Wizard" and unshare the folder
Finally something that works, thanks to Susan Ng for this suggestion. First remove other users you may have set the share to as per suggestion 2. Then under "Folder and search options -> View", un-check the recommended "Use Sharing Wizard" option. Now you are ready to unshare your folder by right-clicking the folder in question and selecting "Properties -> Sharing -> Advance Sharing" and un-check the "Share this folder" option, and voila! The folder is finally un-shared.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Exclude directories from chown

There's been times when I needed to recursively change ownership of files in a directory but leave certain files alone (e.g. snapshot folders). Came across a highly useful post from Posteet on how to do it. In my case, I needed to exclude directories owned by root and the .snapshot directory. So # find . -xdev -name .snapshot -or -user root -prune -print | xargs chown < user> :< group>
Read more

Flash game: Cargo Bridge

Image
I came across this fun little puzzle game called Cargo Bridge on Kongregate . Most levels are quite do-able (with lots of walkthroughs available if you're stuck). Thus I shall only post solutions for the more difficult levels. Oh, and the game is a little buggy so if solutions which should work keeps failing for some reason, try deleting the offending joint and rebuilding. Or quit to the main menu and restart the level. Level 12: A non-optimal-but-definitely-works solution for those who are stuck. =) Level 16: This level is quite a pain. One of the suggested solutions on the walkthrough actually had an arched bridge which didn't work well for me as the little guy got stuck. I then came across another solution which was flat, but broke too easily. Thus I modified the support structure and hey presto, it worked! Level 18: Probably one of the most difficult levels. Thanks to Tasselfoot for his walkthrough on YouTube for giving birth to this solution. Don't worry if...
Read more

Copying Sony recovery partition to new harddisk

For those whose harddisk (HDD) are dying or simply looking to upgrade to a bigger, faster drive, here's how to backup your hidden Sony recovery partition to the new drive. Firstly, plug both disks to a computer. For me, I plugged both disks to my desktop (with my original desktop HDD unplugged to avoid accidentally messing with it). Next, get a Linux live CD. There are a few variations available, most commonly Knoppix and Ubuntu . I'd go with Ubuntu for this example. Boot the live CD run the software Disk Utility in Ubuntu to check that both HDD are detected. Make note of the drive letters for each. For my case, as the original is the master drive, it is detected as sda and the new one is detected as sdb . Create a partition in the new HDD about the same size as the hidden partition (around 10GB). Fire up the Linux terminal and copy the hidden partition over. (Note that your partition number may vary. Use Disk Utility to check for the correct partition numbers.) sudo dd if=/d...
Read more