Can’t share files on home network

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Having a problem sharing printer, directories, and files across my home network. Win 10 Pro, ver 1809, build 17763.348.  Any help would be appreciated.

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How are the printers connected to the Network?  How do the computers connect  to anything else?  It’s literally in the details of the Network.  I have 5 Desktops, 1 workbench plus any number of Wireless Notebooks connecting with 2 printers using Ethernet to the Wireless Router and 2 NAS drives using Ethernet to the Router [actually a 4-port Router with an 8-port Switch] and any computer that can access the Router and the Internet can use the NAS drives and files stored on them plus store more files.  Same for the printers, any computer their software is installed on can print.  I have no need to share the computers or their drives themselves.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

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I’ve had the same problem for a few years. When Homegroup worked, everything worked fine, but as Homegroup faded away, things started to fail. Right now, I’ve got printers, a Linux machine, lots of Things, and 3 Windows 10/Pro/1809 machines. They all talk together well enough to get along, but…

1) Some W10 machines can see some of the other ones, but not all. No filesharing works as I think it should.

2) Auto-discovery works one-way only for a couple of the W10s.

3) I can map a drive manually to almost everything I need to, but some W10 machines just can’t be found.

Sorry for all the vagueness – I’m making do, with little time to figure out exactly what’s broke on which machines, just wanted to add my $.02 (or less) to support the OP.

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pblack wrote:

Any help would be appreciated

Any clarification would be appreciated—ie help us to help you.

How many devices should be on the network?
Are they all connected wirelessly or wired?
Is all the ‘stuff’ you want seen by others properly shared in its parent machine?
Can you see anything at all on the network?
Can any of the devices see everything?
And so on…

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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Hi Lugh,

There are 3 Win 10 Pro 1809 computers wired on the network

Everything properly shared

Can see media devices only, nothing else

Everything was working before 1809 was updated…computers, files, printers etc.

I was thinking since 1809 has been out for a while that there might be a good workaround available.

Thank you for asking.

Pete

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Have you tried “Mapping” the drives. I had an awful time with 1803 until I just mapped all the drives on the network and now some do not show up under network in File Explorer but I have access to everything now since they are mapped.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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Pete,

1809 has SMBv1 turned off by default. True it has some security implications but shouldn’t have a problem on a home network. Turn SMBv1 back on on all machines and reboot all.

To turn SMBv1 back on: Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off -> SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support (check) -> OK -> Restart.

HTH

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lugh

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Go to services.msc Start the “Function Discovery Provider Host” and “Function Discovery Resource Publication” services, and then set them to Automatic (Delayed Start).

You may have to reboot but then you should be able to browse the networked machines through explorer again.

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These are all set to Automatic on my computers and Explore>Network still doesn’t show all the computers.

Function Discovery Provider Host (FDPHost)

Function Discovery Resource Publication (FDResPub)

Network Connections (NetMan

UPnP Device Host (UPnPHost)

Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRPSvc)

Peer Networking Grouping (P2PSvc)

Peer Networking Identity Manager (P2PIMSvc)

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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This has worked for us on every network that our clients wanted to browse rather than entering the network path path, without having to resort to turning on SMBv1. Are the machines that aren’t showing up wired or wireless?

We had to disable wireless isolation on one client’s router to enable browsing of wireless machines.

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My knowledge here “might” be outdated. But if not . . .

So there’s a reason why peer to peer networking gets so unstable after about 4 or so machines. That reason is the built in TCP connection limit for desktop operating systems from MS. Last I checked this limit was 20. But hold on there — this doesn’t mean 20 other machines/printers/NAS systems can connect to you at the same time! Every workstation will consume some number of TCP connections for every shared printer, or folder, that you expose on your small network.

It’s pretty typical for the practical limit to be around 4 or 5 machines and printers, anything past that and you start seeing the last few machines in the network browser, but not all of them at the same time. This soft limit is from poor coding in the local master browser service (which is only used on P2P LAN’s, not on large AD driven networks.)

If you have one to three or so machines, you likely never see these problems. Get much higher and things break. Hard linking to mapped drives helps, but even then you can run into the upper hard limit and no amount of diagnostics will help.

Another problem is the sorry state of the Master Browser service in the newest editions of Windows 10. In short, it’s a mess and there’s nothing you can do on those machines to fix it.

But there is one trick that seems to help – some.

Have an older Windows 7 or certain NAS boxes on your network, and use the hacks in the following post to ensure that it’s ALWAYS the master browser. (This involves disabling Win 10 clients completely for the MB role.)

http://www.boristheengineer.co.uk/networks/master_browser.htm

AFAIK ever since MS deprecated HomeGroups in Win10, P2P networking for larger sets of home machines has never worked right.

They’re working on it . . . maybe . . . someday.

~ Group "Weekend" ~

1 user thanked author for this post.

Lugh

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I wonder if I could ask my FreeNAS server (a Linux machine) to be the master browser…

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Hi, I was able to use this idea and it WORKS!  I would like to thank everyone for their input… I’m back to working.

(To turn SMBv1 back on: Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off -> SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support (check) -> OK -> Restart.)

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Sorry, RetiredGeek, I didn’t mention the thank directly to you.  Your input was very good.

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I tried that SMBv1 fix to no avail. My Linux machine uses v2 anyway, but the only way I can connect to it is by mapping — it never appears in the list of Network Devices, nor do the other 2 W10 machines. I can map individual folders on them all.

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cyberSAR wrote:

This has worked for us on every network that our clients wanted to browse rather than entering the network path path, without having to resort to turning on SMBv1. Are the machines that aren’t showing up wired or wireless? We had to disable wireless isolation on one client’s router to enable browsing of wireless machines.

Both wired & wireless.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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I should have mentioned, I also run wired and wireless connections. In the past, I have often found that while I could ping between all pairs OK, I couldn’t establish connections at higher layers. For example, I used to use a cellphone app to connect to a PC to download/upload pictures. The cellphone always used a wireless link, and if the PC was wired, the app wouldn’t connect, although they could ping each other. If I switched the PC to a wireless connection, it worked OK. Right now, 2 W10 PCs are wireless, one is wired; the only one that’s discovered is the wired one, and it’s only discovered on itself. The wireless PCs don’t show any network devices other than those mapped.

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I had similar problem which in my case was solved when I put devices I knew should be seen in Explorer on Zone Alarm White List after by accident I discovered Zone Alarm had been blocking them.

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