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Network Sharing turns ITSELF off!

Ben Brown 30 Reputation points
2025-10-20T12:04:07.3333333+00:00

(W11 Pro 25H2 )

After years of being annoyed with Windows networking between my desktop and my laptop I recently found some deeper setting that got them to consistently see each other and play nice. I can't for the life of me remember the settings now, one of them involved a Reg edit, or something similar I don't think I'd seen before, that removed the need for login to see each other.

Anyway, today I tried to copy a folder I was working on from my laptop over onto my desktop to continue work and each others' network drives were not visible to each other, from shortcuts, or from File Explorer. From either machine. So I thought I'd look for updates, have just updated both machines to 25H2 latest update.

On the laptop I can see network and file sharing is active, the network is private, ll looks OK, the other devices, NAS drive etc can be seen over the network, but the desktop has issues.

On the desktop machine, when I go to the Network tab in File Explorer I get the message 'Network Discovery and file sharing are turned off. But clicking to turn it on the same message reappears. When I visit Advanced Sharing Settings I can see Network Discovery and File and Printer Sharing are both turned off, but when I turn them on, go back a page and come back, they are off again.

Network Discovery is disabling itself, my Main PC needs to access my NAS drive and my laptop for daily office tasks, any ideas what i can try, to fix it? Thanks!

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Internet and connectivity

Answer accepted by question author

JC 8,145 Reputation points Independent Advisor
2025-10-20T14:09:01.5466667+00:00

Was able to find another user having the same issue on a windows 11 pc but on an earlier patch this september.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5542234/network-discovery-toggle-resetting-to-off

Please look through the thread as they seem to have more in depth answers, one particular solution the thread pointed out was resetting the firewall settings to default, do note that if you have custom settings they will also be wiped out.

Hope this helps

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  1. Ben Brown 30 Reputation points
    2025-10-20T14:14:31.62+00:00

    Thanks JC! I just came back to say I've reset the Firewall to default and network is back to life again!

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  2. Ben Brown 30 Reputation points
    2025-10-20T13:46:13.6266667+00:00

    Still no luck. I have gone through and made sure the following services are running: DNS Client, Function Discovery Resource Publication, SSDP Discovery, UPnP Device Host.
    Some weren't, I made sure to set each to 'Automatic, so they run at startup. Hasn't made a difference either

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  3. Ben Brown 30 Reputation points
    2025-10-20T13:38:37.1966667+00:00

    Thanks. The value was 2, now I've changed it to 1. Nothing has changed though, and I've tried restarting the computer too.

    I followed a few suggestions to make sure services are running on startup too, and I've done an sfc scan and DISM check.

    The same still happens

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  4. JC 8,145 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2025-10-20T13:28:45.06+00:00

    Hello,

    I was able to find a different user with a similar issue on the forums, they’re also using a home server, and they useda regedit command, and changed this value

    Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache

    They changed the start value to 1, and then turned on network discovery in the advanced sharing settings.

    Note that they did this on windows 10, but the registry entries should still be the same even if you’re on windows 11.

    Here is the source for the solution.

    Windows 10 Network Discovery keeps turning itself off - SOLVED - Microsoft Q&A

    Let me know how it goes,

    JC

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