Who trashed my Windows 11 LAN?

Small home network, Win10 Pro+Home and one Win11 Home, the latter used by my non-IT literate wife. From time to time I make sure any important documents that end up on my Win10 Pro are copied over to her machine just in case anything happens to me.

Went to do that today and the machine isn't there. Reboots, start checking diagnostics, IP scanner etc, my Android utility finds the machine but no open ports. Check sharing is on. Run around Firewalls etc and find File and Printer sharing now turned off, turn back on, still no good.

Windows Key+ -> Network and Internet -> WiFi Properties -> Set to Public Network. Who did that!!

Reset to Private and all good again.

I think that happened on the last Win11 update or the one before it. I had similar problems with the file sharing on one of the computers on my network. Public and password got turned on. :-( At least I knew exactly where to check.

Not my wife's fault then Must have been some so-called professional somewhere!

AnthonyL said:

Not my wife's fault then Must have been some so-called professional somewhere!

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Don't jump to conclusions, it happened on my wife's computer, too. :-D:-D

IMO Rule #1 of Windows Networking for File Sharing

Learn to set fixed IP addresses for your PCs and connect to their file shares by IP address, not computer names. Never rely on network browsing or the name resolution provided by Windows networking itself. It seems that it *always* causes problems at some point down the road if you give it long enough.

Billiam29 said:

IMO Rule #1 of Windows Networking for File Sharing

Learn to set fixed IP addresses for your PCs and connect to their file shares by IP address, not computer names. Never rely on network browsing or the name resolution provided by Windows networking itself. It seems that it *always* causes problems at some point down the road if you give it long enough.

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Maintaining IP lists is a bit of a pain though and my router is setup to only assign within a limited range. I have however two tools which help in this regard:

https://angryip.org/ on Windows

Port Authority on Android which in this case found the recalcitrant computer but showed that none of the regular ports were open yet found them on other machines and that enabled me to home in on the problem which fixed IPs wouldn't have helped with. My Printer and NAS are on fixed IPs outside of the DHCP range.

Ken Seals said:

AnthonyL said:

Not my wife's fault then Must have been some so-called professional somewhere!

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Don't jump to conclusions, it happened on my wife's computer, too. :-D:-D

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Microsoft Misogyny? That's a new one!

AnthonyL said:

Maintaining IP lists is a bit of a pain though

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For two pc's? Your standard of pain seems low.

I've been a networking consultant since the 1990's. I have to agree that name resolution in Microsoft Windows is just a royal pain. Bypassing that step definitely has some pros, but setting fixed IP's also can be a pain down the road when things need to change. If you set a fixed IP on anything, it's advisable to label that IP on the outside of the device.

Plus, I've seen a lot of wonky update patches over the decades. A few of them reset the network, and you ended up with a DHCP assignment.

And of course with a fixed IP address, you run some risk of duplication. That's always fun to troubleshoot.

PHXAZCRAIG said:

AnthonyL said:

Maintaining IP lists is a bit of a pain though

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For two pc's? Your standard of pain seems low.

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The Win11 was the one I was having problems communicating with. The other four plus printer and NAS were fine. None of them were running Win11.

Edit: and my Android phone