Saturday, January 19, 2019

Network PCS Not Visible In Windows 10

in windows 10 sometimes you wont see all network connected pc's when you access to network, most of the time it will dispaly very few pcs or only the pc's running windows 10, it doesn't show pcs running older version of windows (below windows 10), there are many thing to check to solve this problem, such as

1. Network Discovery
2. Firewall / Network Profile
3. SMB File Sharing Support

1 - Network Discovery

first of all please make sure to enable network discovery, see below picture, this is the first thing you need to check.


















2 - Firewall / Network Profile

Please make sure you have correct firewall settings, this includes windows firewall and any antivirus related firewalls, if you enable multiple firewalls if will definitely created many problems. such as windows and antivirus firewalls together, make sure you use only one firewall, see below images, as you can see the image shows network type set as public antivirus firewall, this need to be other than public.
















also you need to set correct windows network profile other than public, see below picture.





















3 - SMB file sharing support

any finally make sure to enable SMB file sharing support, to do that,

1. go to control panel
2. click program and features
3. click turn windows features on or off
4. locate SMB file sharing support / SMB direct and enable (select all sub options as well)
5. finally restart pc and check

you should be able to see all network connected pc's and access to any shared folders if you use correct settings.

Windows 10 Shared Folders Access Failure

if you are in workgroup environment sometimes you might want to access shared folders and files, most people enable guest account to access shared folders in workgroup environment, but even you enable guest account in windows 10 you might run into error as following picture when accessing shared folders and files.

















in order to solve this problems we have to enable insecure guest logons in group policy editor, to do that follow below steps.

1. press Win + R to open run
2. type gpedit.msc
3. navigate to Computer Configuration
4. Administrative Templates
5. Network
6. Lanman Workstation
7. now in the right side find and double click to open Enable insecure guest logons
8. select Enable and click apply and ok.

now restart pc to update group policy or we have to run command to update group policy immediately. to do that

1. open command prompt as administrator (hit window key > type cmd > right click cmd and run as      administrator
2. type gpupdate /force and press enter
3. wait until computer policy and user policy to update

Now you should be able access shared folders and files without any problem.