Can't browse local network with these services disabled

Had problems with network browsing having both win7 and win10 machines.

Windows 10 deprecated some stuff that gives win7 a hard time, check the following on your win10 machines;

Go to Features and enable SMB1 client and server (control panel -> programs and features) .

Set the Function Discovery Resource Publication service to auto-start - delayed.

Double check your settings in advanced sharing (control panel -> network and sharing center). Verify the desired profile is active with desired settings (public or private). Also check below under all networks, easy to miss.

There's a known problem in 1809 with the Master Browser, basically it's broken. I made a post below about it;

Network Browsing Woes with Windows 10, how I resolved - Windows 10 Forums

When you disable system services you must accept that there may be unexpected effects or loss in functionality.

Microsoft provides documentation regarding the major functions provided by each service. But there is no documentation that a service can not have other undocumented functionality. It is known that some services do have such undocumented functionality and there are no doubt others that are not known. As this functionality is undocumented Microsoft is free to change it at any time without notice. This could happen with even a minor OS update and much more likely with a new OS version. If such undocumented functionality is required for network browsing it will not work.

This solution is simple - enable the services.

AGTDenton said:

Hi Guys

Why is it in Windows 7 I could have the following Services disabled and could still browse the Local Network, yet in Windows 10 with these disabled I cannot.

• SSDP Discovery
• UPnP Device Host

Many Thanks

Sorry guys big red herring it turned out to be a bug in Windows XP, I was initially trying to connect from XP to W10. The XP PC was missing updates that I was unaware of which is why I was baffled when it worked in the office and not on site.
And the reason when I tested from another W10 PC was that the network was reset to Public mode, another thing that drives me mental for another topic.

I have reverted back to my W7 settings as above on W10 and this is now working fine and as originally expected.
As this customer is slowly upgrading to W10 we're not going to dwell on it any further.

Just thought I'd post this in case anyone else experienced the same weirdness and in the unfortunate scenario of XP and W10.

Glad you found the problem, that would be an unusual circumstance. You can force all networks to private in win10 by going to the security policy editor either from gpedit.msc or secpol.msc. Go to Security Settings -> Network List Manager Policies and you'll see where you can specify that under "identifying networks". Probably okay for a desktop on a wired network, but I probably wouldn't do that on a mobile machine since you could end up with shares on public networks. I actually have to do that under unidentified networks so my VPN works the way I want.