Strange entries in my \\network

smartcooky said:

.....I have looked on the web but there don't seem to be any definitive answers

Any clues as to what these entries are?

See if this helps:

I cannot browse network shares anymore and I see many entries like '\\Provider\Microsoft.Networking.SSDP//uuid

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0-621152bad777

Bree said:

See if this helps:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0-621152bad777

Yep, I that is one of the results I have seen, but I don't appear to have any trouble browsing the network. When I click on "Network" in the navigation pane, I can see and browse to all computers. I can also see something called "Enhanced Hybrid LTE Gateway" (which is the Ethernet router) as well as two devices called "HP5DBEC8" which are our HP OfficeJet 7740 scanned/printer.

I can create network shortcuts and shares using either computer names or IP addresses to all the shares on the network without any difficulty, and I can browse to them ok.

But in this age of hacking and ransomware, I don't like things appearing on my networks when I don't know what they are, and just because they have "Microsoft" in the name does not give me any confidence they are benign.

ETA: I had a look in HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Network as suggested in that link

All the mapped drive entries are valid

Hi.

That is an odd (but obviously legit) convention.

Personally, I haven't seen this before up until now.
Have you tried converting it to standard format and checking for functionality?