Win 10 pro not file sharing with other PCs.

I assume that they are both in the same {whatever a Workgroup is nowadays}?

I also assume that sharing has been turned on for the desktop?

Have you tried sharing individual folders on the desktop to see if it complains at all?

Cheers

Dave R

Not clear what you mean by "see". If you mean network discovery on the laptop doesn't show the desktop then I suggest you try adding a "network location" for the share (or for each of the shares if several) on the desktop. Gives access for most purposes.

No workgroups with Win 10. They are on the same LAN.

As I said I'd Googled for a fix. That is the first mentioned.

Network on the laptop doesn't show the desktop.

I'd rather have the desktop PC visible in network on the laptop. Same as this has always worked here. Click on that, and I get a menu of all the files etc set to share.

Using the best guide I found by Googling (other than those who wanted you to install their prog for sharing), the final tip was to use the reg.editor to go to:-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters

and create (if not there) a new DWORD (32bit) and call it AllowInsecureGuestAuth. Set value to 1, and base to decimal. Except here, it changes itself back to hexadecimal.

Have you checked that the laptop does not think its wifi connection is a "public" one? That will block most attempts to make inbound connections or to even announce itself on the network.

(you can check if you click on your wifi icon on the taskbar, locate your connection and click it. Click the "Properties" link. Check network profile is set to Private)

The tool does that. Makes no difference, any value below decimal 10 is represented the same in hexadecimal.

There is no way you can throw random suggestions and hope one will work. And random suggestions to disable security sounds suspect.

They don't fix cars like that ...

Can you ping the desktop's given hostname from your laptop?

Within a "DOS" window

can each machine ping the other by IP addr?

can each machine ping the other by hostname?

what does each machine see from running NET VIEW \\OTHER-IPADDR

what does each machine see from running NET VIEW \\OTHER-HOSTNAME

Yes, but hex 0x01 and decimal 1 are the same :-)

We had a "quote board" in one lab where I worked - festooned with famous "dumb" quotes. One of which was from a chap asking "Yes, but is that a 1 in hex or a 1 in decimal?"

Cd be problematical these days when so many think every 1 has a right to self-identify

Octal 777777 on an 18-bit Univac 418-III is negative zero :-) (it's a one's complement machine).

You can change a WORKGROUP=workgroup setting from Powershell (plus a reboot). But I can also understand, that domain join is a Windows Pro or higher sku kind of thing. Maybe doing this from Admin Powershell, will be rejected on Win10 Home.

You can survey the network with:

There, you can see they both belong to workgroup = WORKGROUP.

That's hardly likely to be the reason, because there are file sharing settings (the dialog that appears some times claiming it isn't enabled yet). Something like that could be causing it to fail. The "private" versus "public" setting thing.

To contact a Windows XP PC from Windows 10, you need the Programs and Features : Windows features SMB 1.0 items turned on. For mixed W7/W8/W10, they should be able to use SMB 2 or SMB 3 connections.

There are two services in services.msc their names begin with the word "Function", and one of those handles nameserving for W7/W8/W10. Those used to be there for HomeGroups, but they are still needed for Workgroups/SMB/CIFS to work.

Paul

Ah yup, that old semantic debate about self identified vs biological hex :-)

What does ping do ? Start with that.

I'd hazard a guess you've somehow got each machine in their own private network - hence they won't see each other.

Covered in the first thing in the article I followed. All my PCs are configured the same - but only the newest and most expensive Dell laptop has the problem.

I did wonder why the article insisted you set it to decimal. ;-)

Haven't seen anything related to Workgroups since Win7?

I'm only using Win10.

You can vet the entire subnet with nbtscan, in one go, and avoid the monotony of ping.

Nbtscan is good if things are "mostly right", and you want to quickly verify everything that should be registering, is present.

nbtscan should show the name of each machine, and what group it's in.

The two services in services.msc that begin with the word "Function" should be in running state, for file sharing by name to work.

You can do file sharing by IP address as well.

For example, in Linux (because it's easier to see the syntax), you would do this to try to reach a Windows machine and log into the share. Yes, the program names are wacky, and an acquired taste.

nemo smb://192.168.1.23/SHAREDISK

nemo smb://bob/SHAREDISK

thunar smb://192.168.1.23/SHAREDISK

thunar smb://bob/SHAREDISK

You can type strings like that into File Explorer

\\192.168.1.23\SHAREDISK

\\bob\SHAREDISK

The IP method works more often than the name does. Sometime the name does not resolve. The Network Browser should be keeping track of the names, as new machines come online and register with the browser.

If it's a name-related problem, then using the IP address should work. You would also try using the IP address method, if the nbtscan indicated some machines simply could not be seen at the moment for some reason.

You can also make mistakes when cascading routers, such that subtending nodes off one router, cannot "see" nodes on the other router. Yet, all machines can surf the web (because the WAN direction always works in those s***ty situations).

Paul

I've got two Win 10 desktops on my LAN. One cabled, one Wi-Fi. Both OK for filesharing between themsleves. And both can access the laptop too. The laptop can find the one on Wi-Fi, but not the cabled one. And it's the cabled one I want to share with most. The Wi-Fi connected one is mainly just an AV server.