Win10 wont connect to share - caused by evil PIN system?

mrfrisky330 · 03 Apr 2023

We have 3 Windows 10 professional computers each identical, yet due to a mistake during the setup of the one it has the "PIN" login.

The two computers with standard password login connect to a network share with no problems, the one with the "PIN" login does not. No combination of user name/password works it keeps rejecting everything, have tried logging in using the password instead of the "PIN" but it still rejects any attempt to connect to the network share.

The network share has a dedicated user and password associated with it on the host, have tried creating Credentials for the network share but it rejects that as well.

Do I need to format the PC and start again avoiding the evil "PIN" system?

dalchina · 03 Apr 2023

Hi, FWIW I have 2 laptops (Win 10 Pro FWIW) - both use the same MS login, and both are configured to use a PIN.

For me, network sharing works fine.

Unfortunately sharing is fragile and clumsily implemented, and I had a period following upgrades on 1 PC but not the other when networking partially failed then became unusable- until I upgraded the other PC.

Presumably you have carefully worked through sharing permissions and granted access appropriately based on the password.
Do all PCs use the same credentials, or are different accounts and passwords involved?

You may have seen this:
Share Files and Folders Over a Network in Windows 10

Samuria · 03 Apr 2023

You should be able to connect giving username and password on the pc your connecting to not the password for the pc your using

mrfrisky330 · 03 Apr 2023

Have just tried using the same credentials to access the same network share on two Windows 7 computers - works
Just this one Win10 win the evil PIN refuses to access any network share, despite computer browsing and network discovery being active..

Have also experimented with NET USE, again works on every other computer....

dalchina · 03 Apr 2023

What exactly is 'the same network share'? A different device? If so what, and running which O/S?

If it's old or perhaps a NAS you may need to enable SMB1.

No apparent response to my previous post, so I'll wish you good luck.

LesFerch · 03 Apr 2023

mrfrisky330 said:

Do I need to format the PC and start again avoiding the evil "PIN" system?

The use of a PIN should not be an issue. Many of us have a PIN set and use network shares without issue. But the problem is more likely to be a user profile issue than a machine issue. It's unlikely that you'll need to start from square one.

You can go into account settings and remove the PIN requirement. It probably will make no difference, but it can't hurt to try. If that makes no difference, then you should create a new local test user account (make the account an administrator) and see if the network shares work fine with that account. If that test is successful, then try migrating your broken profile to a new profile using Account Profile Fixer. If the problem persists, then you will need to manually move your files from the old broken account to a new working account.

If the problem occurs with any new account on that machine, then you should try an in place repair.