✔️ Windows 11 - How to Share Files, Folders & Drives Between Computers Over a Network

let's share a folder on Windows 11 over the network to begin we'll right click on the start button and we'll click on system in the system about area click on Advanced system settings and in the Box it comes up click on computer name and then look at your full computer name if you have something like this desktop Dash blah blah blah that's not particularly friendly and we're going to want to change it unless you already have some other network things happening like you're sharing printers don't do it in that case right but if this is your first foray into networking for that particular computer go ahead and click change down in the bottom right here and give it a proper name so we're going to say win 11 a so I'm going to be working between two computers here we'll do it A and B right and work group work group is fine you can change that if you want just make sure that if you do change the work group name from work group here that you put the same work group name on all the computers that you want to Network all right so now let's click ok it's going to remind us that we must restart the computer to apply these changes click ok we're going to click close And of course we're going to restart now now that you've restarted and have a decent computer name you're going to want to right click on the start button click on settings and you're going to go to network and internet now this is an ethernet connection you might have a Wi-Fi connection if you're on Wi-Fi you're going to have to click on that but click on the connection that applies to your actual connection and you're going to see the network profile type now often as is the case here the profiles will default to public which is makes your computer act as if it's in a public setting and it locks a lot of things down one of the things it locks down is a lot of your network functions so you don't want public network as a profile when you're trying to network so we're going to click on private Network right and then we can go ahead and close that so the next thing to do is click on start type in the word control and you'll see a link to the control panel click on that link and make sure that you have view by small icons selected now we're going to go into the Network and Sharing Center we confirm we have a private Network and we're going to say click on this change Advanced sharing settings okay we can maximize this so make sure that network discovery is on and you can leave this set checked set up Network connected devices automatically file and printer sharing we need to turn that on because we're going to be sharing files right now this is under private networks current profile you see if I Collapse that there's private public and all Networks so we've now dealt with the private networks area so let's go ahead and collapse that now we want to go to all networks okay so we're going to expand that public folder sharing you know there's your user folders so if your username is owner under owner you have documents pictures Etc on every Windows computer there's also a public profile documents pictures Etc are under there if you want to share that area you can go ahead and turn public folder sharing on right now here we have file sharing connections 128-bit encryption that's the Modern Standard and has been for some time generally speaking you can leave this setting as is but if you're trying to network to older PCS I'm not sure how far back it goes but you know Windows 98 or whatever maybe Windows 7 but even I think Windows 7 had the 128 bit uh you may want to switch that to 40 or 56 bit but generally you wouldn't have to do that okay and then because we're going to set up the easiest possible Network we're going to turn password protected sharing off all right so if that was left on what you would have to do is you would have to have either the same username and password for all the PCS on your network right so that you know when whoever logs in they're logged in under that username and password and then everything can be shared across the network because that's the username across the network and password right or when you try and access the shared folder from another computer that person will have to have the username and password for the computer that's sharing the folder and they'll have to type that in when prompted right so it just gets more complicated we're going to turn it off in terms of network security we're going to rely here on your firewall Etc right so we're going to assume that your network is private enough because of your Wi-Fi password Etc that random strangers aren't getting in you wouldn't want to do this on a network where you're giving out your Wi-Fi password to random guess of course that kind of thing right so that's off now we can close this area here okay now another step that you're going to want to do sorry let's go back into the control panel if you are going to be sharing with older systems you're going to want to go to programs and features okay and you're going to click on turn Windows features on or off you're going to wait for the list to populate once it's populated then you can scroll down to SMB 1.0 cifs etc etc and check off the Box on the left and click ok and here of course we get an error let's click ok I'm going to jump back in try this once more there we go now we'll have to restart I'll click on restart now now that you've restarted to click on the start button type in control open the control panel and what we want to do here is click on power options and whatever your plan is you know it might be any of these you just want to click on the one to the right of the one that's selected where it says change plan settings all right and you want to have put the computer to sleep set to never all right and the reason we're going to do that is that we don't want this system where you're sharing the files to go to sleep then the files will not be accessible from other computers right naturally this computer will need to stay on for the network files to be available there's some updates coming in in the background there okay so now that we've done all those steps we can right click on the start button and click on file explorer and here's where we're going to choose which folder to share right you can share any folder that you want typically in most scenarios you're going to be sharing the documents folder or a folder within that or you can create a folder on your desktop and share that but let's go ahead and share the documents folder so we're going to right click and then we're going to click on show more options and then we're going to click on properties under properties we're going to have a sharing tab choose that and we're going to click on Advanced sharing click on share this folder now it's going to give you the name of the folder as the default share name you may want to change that if the folder name is quite long or whatever you want to shorten it to something nice and simple you can do that here but generally you would leave this as is right now we're going to click on permissions by default it has everyone as the share but it's only a read-only share so we want to click on full control and then click ok I'm going to click OK again and then we have to move to the security tab click on the security tab we need to add everyone to this list here so we're going to click on edit click on ADD I'm going to type everyone into this box here and click on check names you'll see that everyone becomes underlined we'll click ok now you'll see everyone in the list make sure that everyone is selected and once again click on full control and click ok now you may see errors like this and you can just click on continue the reason that you see these there are mappings to the old style my music my documents type folders like in Windows XP it was my documents now it's just documents so they have these mappings and the security information doesn't tweak onto those so we're going to click on continue there's the my pictures continue my videos don't worry about those and then once that box there is done click on close all right and now you should be ready to move to the other machine and actually access the shared folders Okay so I'm going to do that quickly like so the reason I can do that so fast here is that these are two virtual machines and I can simply click between them you'll have to physically move to your other machine right so here's the other windows 11 machine we're going to do a little bit of similar stuff here we don't have to do all the same setup but we do want to right click go to settings network and internet choose your connection type in my case ethernet right and once again we want to make sure that we're not on a public network which will lock down the network we want to go to private Network okay and we can close that now all things being normal we can now right click on the start menu click on file explorer and up here in the address bar we can click to the right of whatever is there and you're going to put two backslashes and then the name of the computer that you're sharing from so in our case that was when 11 a and we're going to hit enter oh oh we get an error let's cancel that I think I know what that's going to be so we're going to click on the start button type in the word control click on control panel go to Network and Sharing Center okay we're on our private Network let's go to our change Advanced sharing settings right okay network discovery is on let's go all Networks oh that all looks good actually so let's do this bit here we are going to let's go once again start button control panel programs and features turn Windows features on or off and we'll go back down here SMB turn that on select it click ok now we will restart all right let's try that again right click File Explorer click to the right of whatever is at the top here oh updates again flash flash okay double backslash win 11. a hit enter and there we go this is our shared folder documents double click on that and if you click to the right of it you can see the full path the full Network share path right we're going to right click on that and we're going to copy that now if we go down on the left to this PC let's maximize this window here look at this menu we have no they've changed it one second show more options map network drive there we go so just to be clear you're going to right click on this PC yeah we could just do it here map network drive now the reason to map the drive is so that you don't have to keep typing in the network path right so you'll just have a new drive on your system by default it gives you drive Z but you can choose any available letter right from the list but let's just keep it at the default and we will right click and paste in that network path and then we have our reconnect at sign in and we're going to click on finish okay now it opens the share here let's close the window in the background and we'll maximize this shared bit here and we'll just prove that the folder is actually shared so we're going to right click because I don't have any files on the other system so we're going to go new text document okay and say system B was here okay now again I'm going to switch between the virtual machines quickly now here's the original machine that we're sharing files from we shared the documents folder if I double click on the documents folder I see system B was here okay now we'll switch back here's the system that is grabbing files from the shared system right now if I expand this PC and I can see this little line here if I hover over it you get the double arrow I can pull that to the right and we can see the full name here this is the drive Z the mapped drive and here's the name of the share right if you'd like to rename that you can right click and we can go show more options and click on rename and then for example you can put shared documents or whatever makes sense to you right and now you have a drive C shared documents you've got access over the network right just remember to keep the serving system on at all times if you need to access at all times and this works within your local network right if you leave and you're on the road this type of networking is not going to work for you you're going to need something like OneDrive or you know a VPN some other thing that's going to get you that remote access onto your machine hopefully this has helped you set up your network thanks for watching

Channel: Your Windows Guru - Windows 10 & 11

Views: 66,532

Keywords: Tips, Tricks, Help, Tutorial, Instructions, How To, Microsoft Windows 11, Windows 11

Id: c_ZlwFktayQ

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023