It seems like it would be very easy to share a folder on your Windows 10 computer to other Windows users in a home network by using your file explorer, right clicking on a folder, under properties, select sharing, then advanced sharing, and share the folder. It doesn’t work as one would expect. This is particularly annoying as the home users whom I have encountered and face this very issue really don’t know how to resolve this. This would include me too. I have been using computers since the DOS days, starting with Windows 2.0 though today’s Windows 10 release. What once seemed to work, no longer. Well, there is more to the solution, and since I can’t seem to remember it, I am putting it here to help me along, and hopefully someone else too.
The “problem” as it is explained on superuser.com:
On Window 8.1, and presumably Windows 8, when using a Microsoft account to login to Windows, the default user-name when you make a network connection is MicrosoftAccount\<live_id_username>, instead of the login <computer_name>\<username> as in previous versions of Windows.
This MicrosoftAccount form is likely to cause a login failure on any server that is not using a Microsoft account, due to the schizophrenic way that Microsoft/Local accounts are implemented in Windows 8/8.1.
The solution.
- Open Network and sharing Center
- Click on Change advanced sharing settings link from the left panel.
- Expand the All Networks section.
- Switch the radial button to the Turn off password protected sharing setting
- Click the Save changes button.
While this solution worked for me, I don’t know if it alone was the solution. I tried so many things prior to finding this link. I may have even tried this as found in a comment.
You need to grant the Everyone identify permissions to the folders you have shared. Further, if you want users to be able to modify folders over the network, you need to edit the Share permissions and make sure ‘Everyone’ has Full Control.