Network file sharing not working between Windows 11 & Windows 10

Mine was working sporadically. Using the SHARE button to transfer files worked great for a short period, then stopped. So I began using BLUETOOTH transfer via SEND/RECEIVE on the BLUETOOTH SETTINGS page - that worked fine for a while also, then stopped. Now neither works.. at all. Period.

All devices are "seen" - discoverable. All are "paired" and "connected".

My phone, headphones and wireless router all work fine, just no connection between Win 11 laptop and Win 10 desktop - in either direction.

I've given up completely on wireless file transfers. I'm back to using my thumb drives. Welcome to the future...

The solution provided by @MxAD82 worked for me.

I had the same problem where my Windows 10 machine could not access SMB files shares on my Windows 11 machine. Following the steps below on both the Windows 10 and Windows 11 machine worked for me:

1. Set 'For improved security, only allow Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts on this device' to OFF.
2. Sign Out or better yet, restart.
3. Sign in to the Microsoft account using the account password.

Notes:

• Step 1 allows use of the account password. Step 3 caches the password on the local machine. Thanks to another user who suggested this second part may be part of the problem.
• It worked for me even after setting 'For improved security, only allow Windows Hello sign-in for Microsoft accounts on this device' back to ON and logging in with the account PIN.
• I suspect this won't last forever, especially if you login using Windows Hello (PIN, Fingerprint, Camera), as the account password will need to be re-cached.
• It took approximately 30 seconds after restarting before the file shares were accessible. Patience is a virtue.

This is clearly a hard fault. Why Microsoft hasn't done anything about it remains a mystery.

sir

i have problme win 11 after update my sharing folders giving problem like contack your administrator Bofore that is working after update it not working

please help me

ok

I got it working between my Win 10 and Win 11 machines

set up sharing on both machines in the standard ways

there's plenty of tutorials to show how to do that

most likely, if you're here, you've already done this half a dozen times

next, on your Win 10 machine, if you have ANY drives mapped currently to the Win 11 machine, working or not, disconnect them ALL

don't worry, this will be remedied soon

I know that disconnecting them all sounds like a radical move

I assure you, it's necessary

now comes the part that is confusing everyone

take note of the name of your Win 11 machine

• in my case, my Win 11 machine is called Greylien (it's an Alienware and I wanted to stick to the theme :P )

after disconnecting all shares if you had any to disconnect, open an explorer.exe window on your Win 10 machine

or even open the Networking window

you'll want an explorer window and NOT a command prompt

in the top of the window, in the location that shows what folder you are in, type this in but with your Win 11 computer's name \Greylien\

and hit enter

it will pop up a dialog about logging in
DO NOT log in here
look below for the option to log in using alternative credentials

you may have to click through a couple things to finally get there

make sure to check the box to allow it to use these login credentials from now on

HERE'S the trick: log in with your Microsoft account that you MUST be using on both machines (this is up in the air on whether this is 100% accurate, I don't have another machine that uses an alternate MS account to see if it would work that way. if anyone gives that a try, PLEASE let me know about it in a reply and I'll update these instructions)

after logging in with both your MS account login and password, you'll start seeing the shares coming from your Win 11 machine in an explorer window

you can now right-click map-network-drive

you can do this with all of the shares from the Win 11 machine

Now for the bad news

===============

this connection gets corrupted from time to time

in these cases, the quickest and easiest move is to get on your Win 10 machine and DISCONNECT ALL of your Mapped networks.

another bad bonus unknown: if you have mapped drives from another computer than just these 2 PCs, I have no idea if you might end up needing to disconnect from those mapped drives as well

I really hope not, but if it does have to go that way, just go back and repeat the instructions here

• now that you've disconnected all the shares, do the login with your MS account as described above

it'll take you a few minutes to get all your shares back up and running, but it will be worth it in the end

this whole nightmare pattern took me a good month of trial and error to completely figure out

I really hope it helps everyone else

If you have questions, please respond
if it worked for you, PRETTY PLEASE respond
I'm just one guy with a lot of time on his hands

so if you find a bug or a command I've shared is wrong, let me know so I can correct it

Good Luck to you all

edit: edited for clarity