[RESOLVED] Win7 Annoyances

[JuggaloBrotha]

Why did they add the 'Network Share Key' thing to the OS? When I installed Win7 Home Premium on a friends comp, I copied the share key it gave me to the clipboard but before I remembered to create a text file to paste it in I re-started the computer due to some update it had installed, how do I get that key back? Thusfar I can't share anything on the network from the comp (this is a file share & shared printer comp for their laptop). Or better yet how can I configure Win7 to allow them to share additional folders without needing that key?

[Jenner]

Just like you would any other Windows system. Right-click and select "Share".

I'm pretty sure you can clear the HomeGroup key with the administration account. You'll have to delete the HomeGroup and recreate it.

HomeGroups only work Win7 to Win7 though. If you're talking to Vista or XP machines, you'll need to set up a Workgroup just like before. There's no changes to that functionality. Biggest difference being you can't share libraries on a Workgroup, just their individual folders.

[JuggaloBrotha]

Aight, next time I'm out his way I'll check that. Right now only 1 of their three computers has Win7 on it, in a few weeks their laptop will be upgraded from Vista, however their netbook will probably have XP until it dies due to how old it is and whatnot.

I did right click the printer and select 'Share' gave it a name and everything, but the Vista comp couldn't find it on the network which I thought was really odd. Both computers are in the same work group so they should all see each other but the vista laptop and the XP Netbook could see each other and neither could see the win7 comp. I'm sure I'm missing some setting or something, they've sure changed how the networking stuff works in Vista/Win7 and I'm still used to win95 - XP when it comes to this.

[JuggaloBrotha]

I totally forgot about this thread, I ended up disabling the home group stuff and everything works just fine. Even the XP Netbook has the Win7's shared printer installed and can use it through the network.

[Jenner]

I got the HomeGroup set up on my network, but quite honestly, I may just disable it as well because it's just sharing things that don't need to be shared.

What I'd like to do though is get rid of some of the crud on the left-hand-side of Windows Explorer (all the garbage that fills the tree now) because I don't use any of it and always have to scroll down to get to my drives. Libraries were cool at first, but in my opinion a pain in the rear to maintain.

Being able to enable downloading to my Desktop would be nice too, because it doesn't let you do that; but I told myself I'd leave UAC on and just get used to it (if that even is a UAC "feature").

It's been long enough people most likely have figured a fair amount of registry hacks for Windows 7. Time to start looking into them. Hopefully they're as easy as my trick: HKLM->Software->Microsoft->CurrentVersion->Explorer->MyComputer->NameSpace->DelegateFolders->(delete that junk) to get rid of junk like the shared folders, portable media devices, scanners & cameras, etc.

[JuggaloBrotha]

I've added two of my 4 partitions (drives) to the top category in the right side nav tree (I think it's the "Fav's" node) simply by dragging it up there from the bottom. You can also right click any item from any category and select "remove from this list" or something like that.

I too have completely disabled my HomeGroup stuff on my Win7 comps at home, too much of a pain, I'd rather do manual folder sharing so it can be specific.

[techgnome]

Interesting... I d/l to my desktop all the time... in fact... twice last night. And so far I haven't had any unexpected issues with the UAC like I do with Vista.

Which version of Win7 are you running Jenner?

-tg