Win10 can't connect to Win8.1 but Win8.1 can connect to Win10

Thanks everyone.

I spent some time on this last night with some success but also a lot of things that didn't work, notably, setting up a task with "no password" and the login credentials popup refusing to validate...

...so, being old (78 tomorrow ;-) and tired and now having a workaround to trigger the ability to access from Win10, I'm going to call uncle.

Sincere thanks to everyone... my primary hope that this gets addressed for the sake of users in general.

Beverly Howard

(Former MS MVP)

You are welcome. OK, that's clear regarding the computers. It's the Win 10's that fail to see the Win 8.1, but not the other way around. So, that means the Win 10's must be publishing their resources (FdResPub).

(1) It does seem to be a clue that all is well when the Win 8.1 is signed in to an Administrator account. Even though the Standard account is set the same as the Administrator regarding sharing settings, maybe it isn't doing its FdResPub. Or not doing it on time. I know you suspected as much in the other thread. Have you tried restarting it one of the ways fg2001 said in there. Either restart it in Services or use these commands at an Administrator Command Prompt...

NET  Stop  FdResPub

NET  Start  FdResPub

(2) Does there appear to be a difference in the status of FdResPub between the Administrator & Standard accounts?

(3) Why not change the Standard into an Administrator this way...?...

(a) Sign in to the Adminstrator account.

(b) Right-click START, & select "Run".

(c) Enter "NETPLWiz" into the run box.

(d) Select the Standard account in the "Users for..." window, & click "Properties".

(e) At the Group Membership tab, switch it to be an Administrator.

Does that fix it?

(4) I'm trying to see in here whether you can keep it as a Standard account & still get published into the network by changing a few settings...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/manage/manage-user-accounts-in-windows-server-essentials#BKMK_Manage7

Manage User Accounts in Windows Server Essentials

But that's a tough read. See the section entitled "Understand user accounts".

Thanks for the clarification... appreciated.

At the risk of creating more confusion, I'll repost the following.

In my case, the Win10 computers are visible to the Win8.1 computer and both the Win10 computers can be accessed from the Win8.1 computer.

At the same time, the Win8.1 computer is NOT visible to the Win10 computers and cannot be accessed from either Win10 computer.

For security reasons, the Win8.1 computer is normally logged in as a Non Administrative User.  A few days ago, I used an Administrator login on the Win8.1 box and the Win8.1 computer became visible to the two Win10 computers.

Both the Non Admin and Admin logins have identical file sharing settings.

In the hope that this might be helpful in unearthing an answer.  I have even considered upgrading the Win8.1 computers to Win10, but, I would really prefer not to.

Thanks again for all of the responses,

Beverly Howard

I didn't mean that. I meant the thread was discouraging because much was tried but no cure was found. It looked like they never would give up but ran out of ideas at last. Sorry for being unclear. And I was kind of joking when I used the word "pessimistic" too. Sorry for that.

I'll look through other threads tonight.

>> I'm too discouraged to try more tonight, myself. <<

I apologize if my posts came across as adversarial.  That was not my intent.

I sincerely hope you are having a better day.

Beverly Howard

(Former MS MVP)