How can I equate the same user on different Windows 7 machines within a home group?

Question

Here's my scenario. In our home I have a desktop and a laptop, my wife has a laptop and my two sons each have a desktop. All these machines run Windows 7. I can set up shares on either of my machines and share them to the home group. If I choose R, all other machines can copy from the share and if I choose R-W, all other machines can copy from and to the shares.

Now my two machines are called Steve-PC and Steve-VAIO and I have an account called Steve on each. My question is; how can I have each machine see the Steve account on the other as being equivalent, or at least having the same rights, as the Steve account on the other? The aim is to be able to create a share on either machine that I can have R-W access to from my other machine while the other machines in the home group will have only R access.

In previous versions of Windows with the machines belonging to a workgroup I could have achieved this by adding the Steve-VAIO\Steve account to the machine users, power users or administrators group on the Steve-PC machine and vice versa, then granting the appropriate account the desired level of access to the share.

Answer 1

You can't do this (this way); the accounts are actually identified by a SID (security identifier) and the SID is unique to each computer. So even though the names read the same, they are completely unique.

Windows 7 will still function with the workgroup style set up (depending on the Windows 7 flavor), but I don't think the Home group will do what you want, you have to go back to the old school sharing and NTFS permissions.