Help with networking new Win10 and old Win7

Explain whats happening can you see the other pc can you ping it when you try and connect to a share what happens ie error message. Windows doesnt like no passwords as its a risk and hence its tightening security

I run a mixed network, like NavyLCDR suggests, I turn off password protected sharing.

All my machines (W7/W8/W10 & XP in a VM) have a C:\Temp folder that I share for ease of transferring files. The share permission is set for 'everyone - read/write' and the ntfs permission is set to 'Everyone - Full control'. I also have the 'SMB 1.0/CIFS Client' enabled on my W10 machines, necessary to be able to write to the XP machine, or to use a 2TB USB HDD that's being shared by plugging it into my router's usb port.

As far as possible I try to have the same user account name and password on each machine, that lets me connect easily. But where there's a mismatch I'll be challenged to provide the name and password of an account on the machine I'm trying to connect to, then I can get in. It all seems to work quite well.....

Bree said:

...As a test I've just thrown together the most eclectic collection of machines I could easily put together (Win7, 1809, 1909 and several 20H2). They could all see and connect to each other....

Trouble reconnecting to shares after upgrading from 1909 to 20H2 - post #9

I even have an old Win95 laptop that occasionally gets added to the mix for test purposes....

Bree said:

Here's the C$ share on my '95 PC seen from a W10 PC running 20H2. Thanks for giving me an excuse to run it up and test that it still works

Problem connecting Windows 10 pro to Windows 98 - post #2

robls99 said:

I would love to try turning password protected sharing off but it looks like you need the computer passwords to do that and all we have are the computer pins on the Win10.

To connect to another PC you need to give the name and password of an account on the other PC, but it doesn't have to be the one that's currently signed in on that PC. You could create another local account on the PC named, for example, Access. You could also set permissions for this Access account to give it as much or as little access as you like. Then when you are asked for a name and password to connect you could give the Access account an its password.