martin wrote:

I do not think this has anything to do with WinSCP.

Did you try any other SFTP client?

Not yet. I have always used winscp for everything. being a unix guy I dont have any experience or can find guidelines on debugging win 7 issues like this.

Anyone else out there who has dealt with this?

regards
oldunixguy

I do not think this has anything to do with WinSCP.

Did you try any other SFTP client?

Client is winscp ver 5.7.7 on win vista
Server is win 7 Pro 64 bit running freesshd 1.3.1

freesshd is configured with a single user "painter" and a digital certificate for access.
It is configured as a service, SSHCMD is cmd and user is enabled for shell and sftp. freesshd is run as a service with the user of ZZZZ (different than painter) which has admin privileges.

Putty 0.67 successfully reaches windows7 authenticating with user painter digital certificate and produces a cmd shell. changing folders and accessing everything is possible.

winscp is configured with the same digital certificate and user "painter".

winscp requests the digital cert passphrase and once provided displays the remote files BUT it pops up the error message dialog reporting:
Error changing directory to '/'.
Permission denied.
Error code: 3
Error message from server: Permission denied

In the winscp config for this host I have tried several user-password pairs for real users on the windows 7 remote host. Nothing helps.

The fresshd log shows:
04-23-2016 13:20:36 IP 97.121.134.155 SSH connection attempt.
04-23-2016 13:20:53 IP 97.121.134.155 SSH painter successfully logged on using p
ublic key.
04-23-2016 13:20:53 SFTP service granted to user painter.
04-23-2016 13:20:56 IP 97.121.134.155 painter is listing / (\)
04-23-2016 13:21:22 IP 97.121.134.155 SSH painter disconnected.

Attached are the winscp log and the freesshd.ini

I can provide specific sections of winscp.ini if you tell me which... I dont want to include the entire file because of the large number of hosts I use all with digital certs...

I am stumped in making this windows 7 file access work.

can anyone help me?