Find network access credentials windows 10 or 11

Just adding to this answer, which does indeed still work (using 7 digits of account phone number as user name).

Tested and found that this is necessary when connecting from Win 11 PRO licensed computer to a Win 11 HOME licensed computer, or from a HOME licensed computer to another HOME licensed computer, when using the microsoft account as the primary login, and not using local accounts.

When connecting between two WIN 11 PRO licensed computers, or from HOME to a PRO computer, the email and password of the host PC microsoft account is required and works.

In short:

PRO -> PRO: microsoft account user/pass authentication

HOME -> PRO: microsoft account user/pass authentication

PRO -> HOME: local account user/pass, or account phone number as username if using microsoft account or windows hello

HOME -> HOME: local account user/pass, or account phone number as username if using microsoft account or windows hello

Why does the phone number only work for HOME, and why does Microsoft not acknowledge it? I believe only PRO licenses have the ability to validate the Microsoft account over the internet when a client computer tries to browse the local share. This is probably linked to the remote desktop feature which was moved to a pro license with Windows 11. Hence when accessing a Windows 11 HOME shared drive, the microsoft username and account will fail. (Windows security sees this as MicrosoftAccount domain, i.e. MicrosoftAccount[email]. It FEELS like they retrofitted this msft account authentication for share drives and remote desktop to Active Directory in Win11, to meet business objectives, without thinking about every situation that the various SKUs they sell will encounter, since HOME cannot join a domain like this).

Since this feature change was breaking home networks after they upgrade to Win11, along with the push to change users to Windows Hello authentication from local user accounts, I believe they added the phone number username as a hidden function that maintains backwards compatibility with functions broken by the changes in Win11. Since local password accounts no longer exist on Win11 by default, and they stubbornly moved the replacement for this (online account verification) to the PRO license tier. Microsoft probably prefers users to either upgrade to PRO, or create local accounts if they stick with HOME edition, which is probably part of the script their techs must repeat. But the phone number must be some sort of intentional workaround, since any random string of seven numbers does not work. But one Microsoft would rather not publicize, since it highlights the awkward transition period they put themselves in, where they have to compromise security so they can move an intrinsic part of Windows functionality to higher license tiers.

Honestly, I tried all of that, and much more. So I decided to buy a NAS box and put some very large drives in them. Now all my machines can see/share those drives without issue, and they can all use the same drive letter. I'm so much happier now that I essentially took Windows sharing out of the equation. Maybe someday they'll fix it, but I'm already way past that.

I've been fighting this issue for 2 days now.

I have a mixed network, 2 win 11 PCs and 2 win10 PCs. One of the Win11 PCs is more or less the file server, all the others access shared drives/folders on this machine. 2 of the three other machines have no problem connecting to the shares, but the other win 11 machine (we'll call it NewPC) suddenly can't. The other machines also cannot connect to shares on that NewPC.

If I had any hair, I'd have pulled it all out by now.

All machines were logging in using an MS account.

No credentials seem to work for this NewPC when trying to access the file server. Not an MS account, not a local account.

However, when I switched to a local account on NewPC, suddenly I can connect to the file server in Network, but only one of the mapped drives actually allows access. ??? How is this possible???

So I tried disconnecting a mapped drive, and remapping it. Nope, doesn't like any credentials I try. And, under credentials manager on the file server, it doesn't even show the credentials for NewPC connected to that mapped drive.

This is utterly insane.

This seems like good info however I've gone into my Microsoft account and don't see a way to enable the password or "force create a local user and password." I've always just used a PIN to sign into my laptop, but it seems to be connected to a Microsoft account on some level. Crazy that this is so complicated.

Late addition, but was running into same problem. I had to ID my original user profile name as was in C: Users and use the last local password that I set up prior to moving to the pin. Beat my head against a wall for a few hours on this, but alas, victory.