2 Win 10 PCs can't network properly - What am I overlooking?

Let me echo the request of the person who started this thread for a master list of all settings.

I have wasted incalculable hours over the past years since windows 10 arrived trying to get my home LAN up and running with mixed success. About a year ago I seemed to have succeeded and generated my own master list. But at some point, without making any changes to these settings, it has reverted to a chaotic some PCs cab see some but with no consistency.

If I was not so invested in other Microsoft software I would have abandoned Windows long ago!

Looking for the same tutorial.
I agree that the 10Forums pinned tutorial is not up-to-date!

Shortly after my rant above, a "quality" update installed itself on my PCs which are now on version 1903, build 18362.175. You might think I have better things to do, but I decided to give fixing my network one more go and, what do you know, I succeeded (at least until the next update!). Recognizing that everyone's setup had differences, I thought it still might be useful for some to list the settings that worked for me this time.

My network consists of six PCs (two of which are laptops), all running Win 10 together with two Synology NASs. I still have to access the latter as mapped network drives, but that is because of the first set of changes I made (see below). I am hoping to fix that be setting them up to connect using NFS, but that is going to have to wait for now

Here are what I think are the relevant settings I either checked or changed

1. Disabled NetBios on the network adapters on all PCs. This has the effect of forcing WSD as the network discovery message. Nothing else seems to be complaining about the lack of NetBios.

• This is an interesting related article that I have only partially followed but intend to pursue further How to kill off SMB1, NetBIOS, WINS and *still* have Windows' Network Neighbourhood better than ever | iXsystems Community

2. In Windows features:

• disabled SMB 1.0/CIFS file support and all three sub-options (I understand this is recommended for security reasons rather than for network functioning, unless you have any older SMB 1 relieant devices on your network)
• left SMB direct enabled.

3. In Windows services checked or set the following to auto and running (there are scads more but these are the ones that I remember from previous attempts that did have some degree of success:

• function discovery provider
• function discovery resource
• internet connection sharing
• Ipsec policy agent
• network location awareness
• workstation
• SSDP discovery

Have you tried running Network Reset on the affected PCs? This works for me at least for a while until something breaks the configuration.

I have tried network reset in the past but it didn't fix my network issues then, which is why I started trying various, more specific system changes that were recommended. As far as I know, it would not by itself have made the changes that I reported above that did fix things so all my PCs could see each other and share files on the network without having to use mapping as a workaround. And my memory may be wrong on this, but I think it would have restored NetBios, which is one of the key changes that did fix things.

But others might want to try it and see if it works now as a much simpler fix than digging into the system.

.......it's almost like MS like to mess with us with their network setting........Sometimes my computers connect, most of the time it's a hit and miss affair....sometimes the computers are besties and play nice. It's the random fickle relationships that makes the Windows Network protocol so charming.......:)

All my systems are running HOME edition. Windows only offers me SMB1/CIFS, not any of SMB, SMB2 or SMB3. If I kill SMB1 what then? Also my NAS interfaces on SMB/CIFS, though Windows discovery is Netbios. The article referenced from "iX Community" is interesting, but if I could make that work, I'm not sure about my NAS.