Suddenly "This folder is empty" on sharing PC ??

[G00k]

Shared Folders Suddenly "This folder is empty" on sharing PC ??

I hope I figure out W7 soon...

I upgraded my wife's office to twp HP W7 systems this past fall, wireless networked through belkin router. Old files used to be on wife's PC now in folder called "H Docs (old PC)" in her public folder. Shared to everybody. This was working up to yesterday.

Today, on the second PC, her associate opened a folder nested in the main "H Docs (old PC)" folder. Everything appeared to be there. She needed to get a phone number from another file located somewhere else, so she closed the folder while she got it. Came back to the folder - opened it - "this folder appears to be empty" or like that. Closed the folder and opened another - also empty. Back a couple of folders out, selects another folder, opens it and every thing's there. Closed completely out, rebooted - the same. Calls me in.

I go through much the same, checking paths, checking whether access has been changed - can't find a reason for this. Checked the folder on wife's PC to be sure there's anything there to share - it's all there, thank goodness.

I'm not at her office now, so can't answer much more about exact conditions, but would appreciate a nudge in the right direction. We're not using "home group" for this. On the left side of the explorer window, I go to network and chase down the path to the folder. If I logon with my admin account, I got an access denied once, got through to the folders in question, picked a different folder - looked like everything was there. Then I went to the folder the associate was getting as empty - it was empty. Went back to the one that looked okay - now it's empty. Rechecked the real folder on wife's PC - it's all there.

I'm flabbergasted,

 

[G00k]

UPDATE

It's still happening.

I had another geek - a friend of my son, who's studying computer science at U of MD - come in, explained the problem, and turned him loose.

He basically did what I did - checked permissions, checked how I shared it, shared it again and it worked - for a while. He had no opinion about why it happened, just that it was "better" now (then). But not long after, the folders started displaying "this folder appears to be empty" on the PC trying to share the file. On the main PC, the files are there.

W7 has so much, I don't know, padding? on it, so non-geeks won't hurt themselves, but it's hard to understand what it's really doing. I'd love to find out that there's a way to strip off the padding.

Thanks for looking. - Any ideas?