#303 Windows 10 Network Shares are not working with shared folders on containers mounted as removable media

[Taki Hiro]

Hello,

I came across an issue on Win10 1909 + VC 1.24-Update2-RC (64-bit) while trying to access shared folders on a VC container which has been mounted as removable device.

The problem: you can't access shared folders on veracrypt containers as long as they are mounted as removable media (option /m:rm).

This has not been an issue on Windows 7 and shared folders on containers mounted with removable media option.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

(i assume your windows is preconfigured so that shared folders work and are accessible from other devices just to be sure) then:

1. create and mount a VC container, NTFS formatted.
2. mount this container to a letter with /m:rm or check removable media in the UI
3. create a folder with some dummy files in it.
4. open properties for this folder in explorer and share this folder for everyone or just some user (doesn't matter)
5. try to access the shared folder from another device via smb/smb2 (doesn't matter)
6. You get permissions error and can't access the device. while other shared folder on the normal os-drive with the same share-settings are accessible.
7. then unmount the veracrypt container.
8. re-mount the verycrypt container again, but this time without checking the "removable media" option.
9. try to access the shared folder again from other devices.
10. access to the shared folder on the container is immediately given.

to sum it up: shared folder on veracrypt containers are only accessable when mounted as non-removable-media. this behaviour is different from windows 7 where accessing shared folder was even possible on removable media containers.

How it should be:
shared folders should be accessible on removable media containers even on Windows 10.

Further info:
* The problem does not rely on removable devices per se, f.i. shared folder on ntfs formatted usb sticks work very well. Therefor I suppose this is rather an issue how veracrypt provides removable media containers.
* mounting containers as removable media is often prefered due to windows' event logging (event-id 98) of ntfs volumes if they are not mounted as removable media. so sticking with the non-removable option as solution is not a fix for this issue.