I've narrowed down a problem that bugs me at regular intervals when setting up new test systems here at work, and I'd like to know if anyone else has seen this, and if they know how to solve this?

- Install the Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating system fresh, on a new PC or a new virtual machine. (The "target" machine.)

- Network type is "Work Network", i.e., it is a private network.

- Go into "Network and Sharing Center"

- Enable the following things in Network and Sharing center's advanced features that are normally turned off by default: "Network Discovery", "File and Printer Sharing".

- Note, by looking at the Windows Firewall settings, that the firewall has automatically added the exceptions for these two features in Windows Firewall. (There are now exceptions for "Network Discovery" and "File and Printer Sharing" activated in Windows Firewall.)

- From a different PC, note that I can ping the target computer (ping computername) successfully and that the DNS IP address that comes up in the ping results is correct. So Network Discovery is working.

- Attempt to connect to one of the computers' file shares by doing Start, Run, "\\computername" from a different PC.

- The attempt to connect to the file share fails with an unknown error. There is an extremely long pause before the failure box appears, at least 60-90 seconds.

- Turn off firewall completely on the target machine (instead of just relying on the firewall exceptions mentioned above) and try again.

- The attempt to connect to the file share succeeds, and does so instantly.


Why is it that, when I've gone into the correct Windows setting screen to enable file sharing, and the results are clearly visible in the Firewall screen, that it fails like that? What's going wrong here? What little secret setting have I not enabled on the target machine?