Find network access credentials windows 10 or 11

Executive Summary of What Worked for Me:

Check to see whether you are signed into your various computers with Microsoft accounts or local accounts. Windows 11 almost forces you to set up a new computer with a Microsoft account, but your older computers may have been set up with local accounts, even if you subsequently upgraded them to Windows 11. If you're having trouble sharing over the network, I recommend creating a local account on all computers, including the new one, with the same username and password, and logging into all of them using that local account. This completely solved my issues. On my wife's computer, I was then able to create a second local account for her, which worked just fine as long as my local account existed on her computer, and the other computers were all logged into with my local account.

Long Version: I'm embarrassed to tell you how many hours I spent over the past week trying to get my new Dell Windows 11 computer "seeing" and "sharing with" the other computers on my home network, and vice versa. The other computers on my network had been communicating just fine, although they originally were set up with the Windows 7 Operating System, had been upgraded to Windows 10, and later to Windows 11. When I tried to add my new computer to the network, the old ones still communicated with each other, and I could "see" the other computers in the new computer's File Explorer, but got an error message when I tried to access them from the new computer, or vice versa. First, I got the dreaded "Enter Network Credentials" error. Thanks to someone earlier in this thread, I found I could enter my phone number as the username and leave the password blank. Believe it or not, this unlikely suggestion worked for me, too, although I don't think the phone number is important; it seemed to work with any string of 10 digits I entered (no dashes). That got me past the "Network Credentials" error but, unfortunately, just led to the next error message: "Windows cannot access \XXXX", where XXXX=your computer name.

I followed suggestions in so many web sites, forums (including this one), and YouTube videos, changing the most obscure settings along the way, and resetting the network settings several times, all to no avail. Among the many YouTube videos I found in the course of researching my problem were Leo Notenboom's (Ask Leo! is the name of his You Tube channel) "Increasing the Odds That Windows Network Sharing Will Work" and "How Do I Go Back to a Local Account After Setting Up Windows 11 With a Microsoft Account?" Among his suggestions, Leo recommends that all computers on your network share a common account, whether a local or Microsoft account, even if they're not all logged into that account. Based on his recommendation, I set up a Microsoft account on all my old computers to match the one on my new computer, but it didn't solve the problem. After many more frustrating hours going down one rabbit hole after another, I decided to revisit Leo's recommendation, but this time make the common account a local one, and log into all computers with that local account. Bingo! Suddenly everything worked as if Microsoft knew what they were doing! No "Network Credentials" errors, and no "Windows cannot access" errors. I'm leaving the Microsoft account on all our computers, but I'm logging into them with the local account.

I can't say if this will solve your problems or not, but it's relatively easy to try. Google Leo's YouTube videos if you need step-by-step instructions to make these changes.

Hope this helps someone. My sincere thanks to Leo Notenboom and everyone else who posted useful information and suggestions.

This is so simple, and nice. works perfectly. thanks you so much. And thanks Microsoft, for keeping things only usable by complete network geeks :-(

Now for the really stupid question = how do you set up a local account vs a Microsoft account. I have a Microsoft account already but never heard of a local account?

I recommend you go to YouTube and search for Leo Notenboom's channel: "Ask Leo!" On his channel's home page, search for these videos: "Increasing the Odds That Windows Network Sharing Will Work" and "How Do I Go Back to a Local Account After Setting Up Windows 11 With a Microsoft Account?" Leo is a master at explaining this and many other confusing computer issues so normal people can understand.

THIS WORKED FOR ME!!! w11 to w10

Thanks