I've been running Vista since it first released. Since day one, I've been able to share the root of a drive (share the entire drive, not just a folder in a drive).

I recently added a new drive, shared it, and have had problems with it the whole time (file permissions that don't stick, file access problems across the network). I tried fixing this tonight and found something very peculiar. All the "Sharing..." and Security options for every drive are gone. All the previous shares are just as they were and work perfectly, but I cannot access a Sharing or Security tab for any of the drive properties. I can access a share wizard if I right-click a folder and select Share, but that option no longer exists for any of my drives.

If I were to guess, the last patch my system got changed this behavior. Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution? Thank you for any input.

I've since found half a solution to this problem. If I go into the Computer Management console, there is a "New Share" option when you right-click the active shares sub-folder. From that wizard, I can add a share to anything, including drives.

There still is a problem with not being able to access the security tab for any of the drives, so I still need some help with that.

I also encountered a very similar problem. Before I added the second drive, I had one drive with two partitions. I had no problem sharing them on the network to everyone by setting the "Sharing" tab in the drive property.

After I installed the new drive, I did the same thing. But other PCs on the network could only read the content of drive but not write to it, even though the sharing include "everyone" with 'full control."

Then I looked into the "Security" tab next to the "Sharing" tab in the drive property, there was no "Everyone" user name. After I added the "Everyone" user name (also enabled the drive sharing to everyone), the whole drive is now writable by everyone from the network.