Windows 10 and Windows 11 network sharing
brucine Posted messages 24375 Registration date Status Membre Last intervention -
Hello,
I have a Windows 10 Home laptop that is starting to show signs of weakness (random hardware crashes), and I just bought a new Windows 11 Home laptop (which doesn't really add to the discussion, but we have no choice anymore).
The question is secondary because USB drives and external disks exist and the Windows 10 is no longer intended for long-term use, but still.
They are both connected to the router, the 10 via Wi-Fi, the 11 via Ethernet cable, both can connect to the Internet normally and ping each other normally.
They both have a fixed IPV4 address of 192.168.1.n, are on a private network, file sharing is enabled, and at least one folder or partition is shared on each side.
In the network on both sides, I only see the router and my network printer, and occasionally my Raspberry which has an address in the same range when it's plugged in.
But yesterday, I could see 11 from 10 and access files and transfer them, but not 10 from 11, and today I can’t see either in any direction, firewall disabled or not.
I'm stuck, thanks.
4 réponses
Hello,
shared folders are seen in the this PC section, the simplest way, as always, is to configure a network drive with the UNC path of the shared folder across from it. On Windows 10 and 11, the easiest way is to use the "public" shared folder in c:\users which has the right NTFS permissions (read/write for the Everyone group).
After that, there is no need for sharing on both sides; one is enough, let’s say on the server, as long as it is accessible for read/write on both sides.
The Windows/SMB network, like all real networks, isn’t set up haphazardly, as Microsoft has too often tried to make people believe; it’s about organization.
That’s why it works well on a domain, often much less so in a workgroup, and this applies across all versions of Windows since 3.11
And there we go, there it is ....
But goodness, those line spaces are so annoying!!
hello,
"In the network on both sides," does this refer to the "network" view in the file explorer?
This has been deficient for decades. The simplest solution is to create a permanent shared folder (associated with a drive letter and always connected). To access other non-permanent shared folders, you just need to enter them in the address bar of the file explorer.
The most reliable method is to work with net use commands, possibly via scripts.
Hello,
This refers to the Network icon that appears in the left navigation pane of the explorer or, if preferred, directly on the desktop since I'm lazy.
The assignment of rights on the destination PC can be more or less complex depending on the destination OS, but to access them, you first need to see them.
As I've illustrated before, this has always worked from XP to Windows 10 and more recently (this is my first Windows 11 PC) from Windows 11 to Windows 10, the only malfunction being from Windows 10 to Windows 11: the Windows 11 PC does not appear in Network.
Creating a share to a folder of your choice via Add a network location from the explorer works fine by specifying the UNC path through the graphical interface.
NET USE will arrive at exactly the same result at the command line since I can only share a specifically designated folder, not view the entire destination PC.
I know that by UNC path I can somehow add as many folders as I please, but as I've also illustrated, clutter in the explorer will eventually become unsightly and I'm lazy: going through Network allows me to display only the destination PC's icon, which contains all the shares I have authorized when I open it.
That's how it is when you're not using the right methods from the start; it can work, with some luck, but one day Microsoft does something more structured and if you didn't follow its principles, it stops working.
One must say that Microsoft's policy on working group networks is so random and changing, wanting to do too much for the users (unlike areas where administrators are trained in the right methods), they have switched back and forth; now it is becoming more structured and closer to the policy in a specific area.
You are kind, but if PCs are not part of a domain, it simplifies the situation. Could you also kindly indicate what these methods are, as the visibility of networked computers in Network has always been confirmed by Microsoft (and it still works at the start of Windows 11 without any particular manipulation).
It doesn't make sense for there to be Windows versions outside of network servers that have a Network item, which, according to you, we shouldn't be able to use, and thus its presence would be surprising.
It's certainly much more prosaic; there’s probably a setting I’ve misconfigured, a service that isn't correctly activated... and which is either preventing network neighborhood starting from Windows 10 (but it seems to me, I had uninstalled them, that I could perfectly see my virtual machines there) or selectively preventing not even access permissions but the visibility of the existence of a Windows 11 PC.
We see everything that is automatic in "network": protocols often created by others than Microsoft: Apple for Bonjour, mDNS plus everything that is in LLMNR and DLNA, all these things, but all that is not the Windows network (SMB protocol).
In the past, network neighborhood was the UDP broadcasts on port 136/137 that announced the machines and carried out the master browser election, that seems to have disappeared now or be very filtered and the network neighborhood of yesteryear no longer exists whereas it was the basis of the workgroup.
Yes, it does.
I don't dispute that what is "foreign" (Box, TV decoder, and network printer) is visible by default, but if SMB and NetBIOS are not enabled by default, they are not dead as long as they are activated in optional features and the network adapter, and NetBIOS is not blocked by the firewall.
Unless an intrinsic feature of Windows 11 prevents it from being seen this way, I can't find documentation about this.
Hello Brucine,
Welcome to the club!
Yesterday, it was me who had network issues between W7 - XP and W10 (I don't have anything on W11)..
The ping works in both directions, but there's no connection to shared folders.. the problem: the DNS server.
For now, it seems to be resolved by enabling NetBios on TCP/IP in the WINS settings of the network card on IPv4.
And what unlocked the discovery was checking the box "SMB 1.0/CIFS Client" in W10 from OptionalFeatures.exe.
No idea if this will help things move forward..
Good luck!
Hello,
I had indeed activated SMB1 on both sides, but I had left NetBios at default on the Windows 10 side.
There has been progress: I can see Windows 10 from Windows 11, but still not the other way around.
In the same vein, this was apparently the last "major" issue after spending some time reinstalling and reconfiguring the software (except Office, I only have a 2019 license, I’m going to go broke buying a lot of 2 or 5 Office 2019 or 2021), I had also retained the vmx image files of my virtual machines; against all odds, they carry the host's dlls and therefore no longer work, so I have to reinstall everything, which will also take me a while.
Thank you for this half of the journey.
Regarding the non-functioning of the transferred virtual images, even if the issue is marginal and may not concern many people, honesty compels me to correct it if anyone is reading, and not least because the virtualization software is not to blame and the problem can occur with other software.
As soon as we open these programs, we get kicked out because they cannot find several dll files which, upon investigation, all belong to Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019.
Windows 11 23H2, however, freshly "out of the box," installs them in version 13.X.
Uninstalling them from the control panel, downloading, and installing them from Microsoft (version 14.X).
https://www.microsoft.com/fr-fr/download/details.aspx?id=48145
It's not easy to reinstall new machines with old software...
For Office, it went rather well for me; I managed to install Office 2010 (for what I use it for, it's more than enough)..
This morning I spent the whole morning trying to install my network printers before I understood that if I didn't have a network, they weren't going to appear.
And since discovering the network isn't very fast depending on the machine that has the heaviest OS... it eventually shows up... after a certain number of coffees!
Hello,
Yes, I hadn't thought of that, we can indeed refer to a specific folder by its UNC path.
The Public folder has only limited value, it will only show what has been placed in it beforehand.
And the UNC path also has limited usefulness: if I have multiple shared folders across several partitions, I will have to create a network drive for each one, which is rather cumbersome, whereas traditional sharing shows the remote computer with all accessible shares under a single icon.
If there must be an "organization" of a network, you need to specify which one, I have never found any barriers to and from XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10 (and even Linux), but from Windows 10 to Windows 11, nothing.
Moving personal files to transfer or share to public isn't too complicated after all. And it allows for better management, and yes, you need a network drive for each share; you should never share the root of a disk, in fact, Windows refuses to do so.
If you don't share a folder that has NTFS permissions (the security tab) "everyone", then you need to connect with the appropriate user account or create it on the client machine and connect with it.
A Windows network typically has a server that holds the shares and clients around it that access them, not shares everywhere with everyone.
In a corporate network, even home directories are on the file server, which allows you to find your account exactly the same on any machine you use.
It still doesn't answer the question.
It may involve not only transferring data but also potentially, for example, software installers or scripts that haven't been needed until now, and why do it simply when we can do it complicated, by moving them to the Public folder instead of fetching them from their dedicated partition.
Windows does not formally prohibit sharing the entire system partition even if it's not necessarily a good idea and that is not what we are talking about here (only its desktop may be involved, which can be shared without issue when the PC is visible on the network, the rest of the software and data is on other partitions).
The two machines already have the same identifiers, only the name of the computer changes of course (I can also try putting the same name, not sure if that’s a good idea either) and NTFS permissions do not change anything (you cannot apparently add those of a remote user through the graphical interface, maybe through ICACLS syntax, I haven't tried yet.
In a workgroup, unlike a domain, you cannot add remote users; remote users must use a local account to connect to shares, but they can log in automatically if the username and password are the same.
In principle, the software installers or scripts that you have downloaded are in your user's downloads, and it's easy to transfer them to public.
Indeed, you cannot have two machines with the same name.
In a domain, discovering neighbors to populate the "network" neighborhood doesn't really work any better than outside the domain.