Windows Networking
Unfinished article
The complexity of sharing files in Windows is without doubt one of the hardest basic things you can do in Windows.
Here are some incomplete notes on how to accomplish that.
So assume Computer A has a folder it want accessible to Computer B.
So the first thing is it’s good if both computers have a guest user account set to active. To see if this is the case open a terminal with admin priviliges.
Then run the command net users guest. Checkout the sixth line down where it says Account active. This will be either Yes or No. If no you’ll need to create a guest account. Now, unless you have an old version of Windows 10 you can’t simply activate this guest account any more.
So first open a command prompt or Powershell prompt.
Create a new user account called something other than guest.
The name “Guest” is a reserved account name in Windows, even though you can’t access the built-in guest account anymore, so you’ll need to choose a name other than “Guest”. 1
So type: net user Visitor /add /active:yes where Visitor is the name of your new account (can be anything)
Next a password must be applied: net user Visitor *
You can have a blank password. At the prompt for a blank password hit Enter then Enter again for the retyped password.
Simple yeah? Well not so fast. To limit the permissions for this account to guest it must be moved to the guest’s group. You can’t simply move it so you delete the new Visitor account from the user’s group:
1net localgroup users Visitor /delete
Finally add the new Visitor account to the guests group:
1net localgroup guests Visitor /add
Well that was fun wasn’t it!
Accessing the other computer
Instead of showing everything shared on the other computer I’ve found W10 just has a link to media devices which you can only open with Windows Media Player.
To actually see the shared files you need to type in the other computers name followed by the folder name:
1\\PC-NAME\foldername
If that sounds almost too simple don’t fret. This doesn’t always work and so instead you need to type in the local IP address of the other PC instead of it’s name. This IP is generated by your router and can change each time a device starts up.
To find out the IP pop open a terminal app and type ipconfig. Under Ethernet adapter Ethernet: the line IPv4 address contains the local IP address. This is the local IP of that computer.
Then in the Windows Explorer address bar type:
1\\192.168.1.62\foldername
Turn on Network discovery
Hit the Windows start button and type advanced sharing and open the control panel option. In the first dropdown, Private, make sure the Turn on network discovery is filled.