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

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 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. Happy birthday. You haven't got me beat by a lot. Can't blame you for being happy with the workaround from what I've seen BINGing the issue. It's definitely a tough one. Good luck, & keep us informed.

Some more info on why my win10 can't see w8.1 computers.

I have not had the need recently to access a win8.1 computer from this win10 computer, and, sure enough, could not do so when I needed to today.

Went to the win8.1 computer and it had no problem accessing the win10 computer and, after doing so, went back to the win10 computer and confirmed that it could still not access the win8.1 computer

Stopped the FDResPub service (it was running) and re started it.  Didn't help.

Then;

• went to the win8.1 computer
• restarted it
• logged in as administrator
• then immediately logged out
• then logged in as the non-admin user which is the norm for this computer
• went to the win10 computer
• was able to access the win8.1 computer

It did take a while for win10 file explorer to display the win8.1 icon, and it balked when I first tried to open the share, but eventually it connected and allowed me to access and transfer win8.1 files.

In other words, a win8.1 administrative login is required before any win10 computer can access that box.

Hope this info is helpful,

Beverly Howard

That does sound helpful for the next person trying to have a Win 10 see a Win 8.1. Good going. I doubt they'll get any help from Microsoft because Win 8.1 is out of service. Good of you to fill in.