How did you connect to it?
Assuming all Windows 7 systems here, given what you did above, you should be able to press the Windows key + R and enter the following in the Run dialog that pops up:
\\computername\driveletter$
where computername
is the name of the computer (look in Control Panel -> System to find that out) and subtitute the drive letter you shared for driveletter
, e.g. c$
. If computername
doesn't work, try substituting the IP address of the system, e.g. \\192.168.2.15\driverletter$
or similar. What should pop up is an Explorer window displaying the contents of that drive.
Windows 7 has a "Homegroup" feature that you may want to look into if all systems are Windows Vista or higher systems. Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center -> Choose homegroup and sharing options.
EDIT: I found this which suggests to try the following. You might actually already be in a Homegroup (you may have enabled it during setup), which looks like it disables direct access to network drives (personally I've yet to try out the Homegroup feature). Make sure it's turned off by doing the following:
Open the control panel.
Go to Network and Internet.
Go to HomeGroup.
Click on the blue link "Leave the homegroup."
Another thing to try is enabling File and Printer Sharing and changing a registry key:
Open the control panel.
Go to Network and Internet.
Go to Network and Sharing Center.
In the left column, click on Change advanced sharing settings.
There are two profiles. You probably don’t want this on when you’re on a public network so open Home or Work.
Under the header File and Printer sharing, select the "Turn on…" option.
Open the registry editor.
Navigate all the way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.
Right-click in the pane on the right side and add a new DWORD (32-bit).
Give the new setting the name LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, Double click on that setting and give it a value of 1.
You may need to reboot after that.