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Win 10 to 7 VPN and UNC CWD

May
12,845
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I have a VPN connection between a Win 10 Pro laptop (client) and my usual Win 7 Pro wks (ZZ, server). ZZ is known to Win 10 via entries in HOSTS and LMHOSTS. My plugin SHELLEX is just a wrapper for ShellExecuteEx.

When (in TCC v23) I "SHELLEX \\zz\c$", an Explorer window showing that folder opens immediately.

But if I try an automatic directory change with "\\zz\c$" (with/without a trailing '\') it takes about 20 seconds (and works). Once that happens I can change to other admin shares on ZZ aa long as I do it very soon; if, say a minute has elapsed since my last change to a ZZ directory, it will take 20 seconds again. FWIW, PowerShell can CD there instantly.

I did this VPN thing for years with two Win7 machines and earlier TCCs and it always worked very well ... no delays at all. I haven't done it in a year and a half so there might be something I've forgotten. And I'm not blaming TCC c23, I just want some help.
 
When I want to start Explorer in the current directory from TCC, I usually just do "Start ."

I've never had any issues with that. Since I can CDD to a UNC path, it works there as well. And if I want to start Explorer from Windows itself, I just hit Windows+R and enter the UNC.

Do you run any kind of keep-alive?
 
When I want to start Explorer in the current directory from TCC, I usually just do "Start ."

I've never had any issues with that. Since I can CDD to a UNC path, it works there as well. And if I want to start Explorer from Windows itself, I just hit Windows+R and enter the UNC.

Do you run any kind of keep-alive?
Same here (START and Win+R). No keep-alive.
 
Regardless of the CWD, I can always
Code:
DIR \\zz\c$
without delay.
 
Sounds like authentication issue. Is the target system managed by Active Directory?
No. I'm at home where both machines are on a private network. The VPN is the built-in Windows one. When I first connect, I must give credentials (for the server, Win7) and Win10 tells me it will remember them.
 
Whew! It took a while but I have it working nicely. First, I ditched the VPN since both machines are connected to my FIOS router (one ethernet, one wifi). On each machine I made HOSTS and LMHOSTS entries to the other machine's router-assigned IPs. But it was no better than the VPN ... on the Windows 10 end, SLOW ... on the Windows 7 end, ACCESS DENIED. Then I made my passwords the same on both machines ... got rid of the slowness but still couldn't do anything from Windows 7. Finally, after a lot of Googling, I discovered that a policy was needed.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
(DWORD) LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy = 1

That overrides the crippled (by UAC) adimn token when it comes to accessing the default administrative shares.

Now it's as it was for many years between home and work. I can instantly use UNC paths to the other machine in both TCC and explorer.

... happy camper
 
Oh, so, you were accessing administrative shares? That explains it. Also makes it quite wrong, on multiple levels.
 
Oh, so, you were accessing administrative shares? That explains it. Also makes it quite wrong, on multiple levels.
Yes, I suppose it would be better to share every drive on each computer with a visible name!
 
No, I suppose you would be better sharing what you actually need to share.
And use administrative resources for administrative access only.
 

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