How to get our Win10 machines visible on local network??

This is really annoying!!
When our machines were Win7, it was trivial to make the machines visible on our local network, and then share folders. Now that we both have Win10 machines, though, it seems to be almost impossible!!

I've followed all the varying instructions that I've found on the web, but *nothing* works, not even Microsoft's recommendations:
> Workgroup name is set to our workgroup on all machines
> 'Turn on network discovery' and 'Turn on file and printer sharing' are enabled on both private and public networks.
> 'Turn off password protected sharing' is off on all machines
> Internet access works fine
> Both machines have wired connections, not WiFi
> I tried disabling the Defender Firewall, that didn't help
> 'Internet Connection Sharing' has both boxes checked
> There are other things that I tried as well, including setting the network to private vs public

In spite of all this, I cannot even see my *own* machine in Explorer, under the network folder.

What do I need to do, to make our local network usable ???

Gorlash said:

This is really annoying!!
When our machines were Win7, it was trivial to make the machines visible on our local network, and then share folders. Now that we both have Win10 machines, though, it seems to be almost impossible!!

I've followed all the varying instructions that I've found on the web, but *nothing* works, not even Microsoft's recommendations:
> Workgroup name is set to our workgroup on all machines
> 'Turn on network discovery' and 'Turn on file and printer sharing' are enabled on both private and public networks.
> 'Turn off password protected sharing' is off on all machines
> Internet access works fine
> Both machines have wired connections, not WiFi
> I tried disabling the Defender Firewall, that didn't help
> 'Internet Connection Sharing' has both boxes checked
> There are other things that I tried as well, including setting the network to private vs public

In spite of all this, I cannot even see my *own* machine in Explorer, under the network folder.

What do I need to do, to make our local network usable ???

Hi there
Often the problem consists of 2 bits.

1) To be visible to Windows Machines (other than Windows 10 only network) you need to enable SMBV1 in the turn on Windows features etc.

2) On Linux type NAS systems in the SAMBA.Config file (usually in /etc/samba.conf) in the [global] section

min protocol = NT1

(also if sharing / visibility to XP / Vista systems required add the following lines as well
lanman auth=yes
ntlm auth=yes

Also on the Windows 10 system allow incoming connections to this computer.

You might also need to fiddle around with both your router and windows firewalls.

Here's one of My NAS systems samba config file


[global]
min protocol = NT1
# can set it to SMB2 if you want experimental SMB2 support.
#
workgroup = VIKINGURS
server string = Samba Server Version %v

; max protocol = SMB2

log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
netbios name = hestur
security = user
passdb backend = tdbsam
name resolve order = bcast host lmhosts wins

; local master = yes
; preferred master = yes
; os level = 10

load printers = yes
cups options = raw

; printcap name = /etc/printcap
# obtain a list of printers automatically on UNIX System V systems:
; printcap name = lpstat
; printing = cups


#============================ Share Definitions ==============================

[homes]
comment = Home Directories


Here for example is a Windows XP VM system that has no problem seeing anything else on my LAN (currently 1 W10 VM system and 2 NAS systems (Hestur and Wulf) apart from the XP system itself.



Cheers
jimbo

dalchina said:

Hi, please follow the setup instructions in this tenforums tutorial on each PC, checking each step carefully.
Share Files and Folders Over a Network in Windows 10

It took me a couple of attempts first time.

Then note that the 'master browser' system means that when you first wake or boot a PC, it may take some 20 mins or more before it is 'seen' on the network.

In order to overcome that- and yes, before you say it, it shouldn't be necessary, but hey, this is Win 10 and MS... schedule the attached to run on logon.
Network Enable (ztruker).zip

Thank you, @dalchina; I suspected there would be a HowTo available here on this topic, but didn't see it in initial searches... it is one of the most common issues that people talk about with Windows 10 !!
I'll follow that article and hope that it works... If not, I'll be back !! :)

- - - Updated - - -

Also, to @jimbo ... we don't have any older Windows machines in this house any more (I was the last Windows 7 holdout), and we *definitely* don't have any linux machines!!

It's ironic, though, because when we *were Windows 7, this was an absolutely trivial task...

Also, to @jimbo ... we don't have any older Windows machines in this house any more (I was the last Windows 7 holdout), and we *definitely* don't have any linux machines!!

It's ironic, though, because when we *were Windows 7, this was an absolutely trivial task...

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, thanks to @dalchina's leads, I now have this working on both machines... both machines show up on the network, we can see each others' shared folders, and milady can *finally* connect to the printer on my machine!!!

Thank you again, TenForums !!!

dalchina said:

thanks to Brink and ztruker too!

(Do you happen to know which step was required to fix it?)

Well... that's a good question...
First off, the only reference that I ended up using was your link to the 'Share Files and Folders' article.

Two things I did on both machines:
> turn on the SMB/SMB1 options (milady's machine is Win10 Home, so she didn't have SMB).
> set the Function Discovery services to Running and Automatic (they were already running on her machine, but not on mine).

Outside of that, I set her network to Private as recommended in that article, but I didn't have that option with my network, because the interface is set to 'domain' rather than public/private... don't quite know why that is, but the network is working so I'm not going to muck with it any more!!

Most of the other settings I had already set correctly on both machines.

I haven't yet tried ztrucker's batch file, but I *did* download it, so if we see issues on login, I'll add that to our autoexec.bat files... err, I mean, startup folder...