Windows explorer started asking for username and password

Hi,

*** edit: since asking this question a couple of hours ago, I have realised that I can login via windows explorer with "guest" and no password, and then I see the default shares how I wanted with no user home directories, however, I still do not know why it does not default to guest any longer, and I am prompted for a username and password. ***

I have a ReadyNAS Duo v2, RAIDiator 5.3.6 firmware, and this question is related to windows 7 64bit.

I installed everything yesterday, all worked first time, tested streaming, copied 100's of gb via usb external and all good. Up until now, whenever I put the \\hostname in to windows explorer my shares just showed up, media, backup (the defaults).. but no home or user specific drives (this is the behaviour I wanted for now).

I then created a new share in readynas, and copied a another 100gb or so of code over via usb external. When that finished, I could not edit or delete any files on this share via windows explorer. I think this is due to either not setting permissions on the share when I created it in readynas, or the ownership of them being on a different windows pc that was originally connected to the external drive (not sure).

So, I went to that share in readynas and changed the permissions to "allow anonymous access, automatic permissions, all drop boxes to read/write" smb and afp both enabled and the same, and I created my first user on readynas (I didnt need to do that in the end, but while reading documentation and trying to figure out what to do to regain access to these files I created one anyway).

Now, once that completed, whenever I go to \\hostname in windows explorer, it asks me for a username and password. I can login fine with either the user I created or the admin details for readynas, and I see their home dir as well as the shares, and I can now edit and delete the files.. so it is not the end of the world, but I would like to know how I can get back the default behaviour of being able to see the default shares, no user directories, and not be prompted for a login when I put the path in to windows explorer.

thanks in advance for your help, sorry for the long explanation, thought it might help having all the details..

Paul

ps: I understand that this behaviour is preferred, so that not everyone on the lan has instant access to your files, but I would like to understand what happened and why the default anonymous access vanished..