I'm soooo tired of network setup issues. All I want to do is share a folder and all it's sub-folders so other PCs on my network can view and change this remote location. Why is it that setting a dir to "shared" doesn't actually make it usable in any way? The other PC can see the fodler but is unable to actually open it and look inside. It seems every time I want to do this I go through some semi-random process of right clicking the folder and enabling sharing, then looking in the folder properties to add permissions and other sharing... and then I end up with some folders working but others will randomly block permission on certain files or sub-dirs. I have 5 PCs in my local testing network and I cannot believe it should be this complicated... where is the simple "make this folder work on the network" option?!

I have a mixture of XP, Vista & W7 machines, but this seems common to all of them.