Windows 7 network folder sharing has been driving me crazy lately. I don’t remember it being this hard.

I only want to share folders that I select. When I add Everybody permissions, I want guests to have access to it.

• Windows seems to like to share the UserPublic folders, and ‘Public folder sharing’ in ‘Network and Sharing Center -> Change advanced sharing settings’ does not seem to have the desired effect. I simply disabled sharing of the C:Users folder via ‘Properties -> Advanced Sharing’. Sometimes this seems to reset.
• It seems that when sharing a folder within your user directory and using the simple ‘Share’ option in the Properties dialog, then Windows will choose to share this as the full path within Users, i.e. UsersmichaelDesktopshare. Only using the ‘Advanced Sharing…’ button in the Properties dialog can you create a share that does not expose the path. This behavior is different from folders outside of the user directory.
• Giving ‘Everybody’ access to the share is not enough if the actual file permissions do not allow access.