How do I Turn Off Network Discovery and File Sharing Windows 10?
How do I Turn Off Network Discovery and File Sharing Windows 10? Follow the steps described in this article and you will successfully turn off network discovery and file sharing on your PC.
Why would you want to turn off network discovery and file sharing Windows 10? It could be for any reason. Maybe you want to keep hackers out from accessing your PC. With many people connected to the internet these days, it is best practice to secure your PC especially if you’re not sharing your files or printer with anyone over the network.
Turn Off Network Discovery and File Sharing Windows 10
If you’re not sharing your printer or files, you might as well turn off Network Discovery AND File and Printer sharing to make it a little harder for hackers. This increases your computer security. The procedure of turning off network discovery and file sharing on your Windows 10 PC as described below works on standalone PCs.
However, if your PC is joined to an Active Directory domain, most likely your Windows 10 PC’s Network Discovery AND File and Printer sharing settings would be controlled using Group Policy Object (GPO).
Step 1: Open Network & Internet Settings
Right-click on the Network Status icon in the system tray to open Network & Internet Settings.
Step 2: Click on Network and Sharing Centre
Click on Network and Sharing Centre
Step 3: Click Change advanced sharing Settings
Click Change advanced sharing Settings
Step 4: Select to turn on or off File and printer sharing or Network discovery
Turn ON or OFF File and Printer Sharing or Network Discovery. Please Note: If the account you’re logged into is a standard user (and not Administrator), the system will prompt you for an administrators’ password to confirm the change.
Some PCs are known to Turn ON File and Printer Sharing / Network Discovery automatically after Windows 10 Updates have been installed.
No big deal, you can always check it to make sure it’s set as you want it.
Tools:
- Administrators’ password needed to change this setting.
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How do I turn on Network Discovery and File Sharing Windows 10?
Step 1:
- Type “Control Panel” in the Search Bar. (task bar bottom left)
- Open Control Panel App.
Step 2: Click on View network status and tasks
Step 3: Click Change advanced sharing settings
Step 4: Select the Turn ON radio buttons to turn on Network Discovery and File Sharing.
Save your changes. (Please note if the account you’re logged in with doesn’t not have administrator privileges, the system will ask you for admin password to confirm the new setting.)
Turn on Network discovery Windows 10 command line
You can turn ON or OFF Network discovery on a Windows 10 PC via the command line. You need to run “CMD” as an administrator. Here is how to do it.
Step 1: Type “cmd” in the search field located bottom left on the windows task bar
Run as administrator.
Step 2: Turn ON or OFF Network discovery
Enable Network discovery from command prompt:
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Network Discovery” new enable=Yes
Disable Network discovery from command prompt:
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”Network discovery” new enable=No
Turn off File and Printer Sharing Command Prompt
Disable File and Printer Sharing from command prompt:
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”File and Printer Sharing” new enable=No
Enable File and Printer Sharing from command prompt:
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”File and Printer Sharing” new enable=Yes
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Show current Advanced Firewall Settings in Command Prompt using Netsh Command
- Type “cmd” in the search field located bottom left on the windows task bar and Run as administrator.
- once you’re in command prompt type the following:
netsh advfirewall show allprofiles
You’ll see values like shown below
Public Profile Settings:
State ON
Firewall Policy BlockInbound,AllowOutbound
LocalFirewallRules N/A (GPO-store only)
LocalConSecRules N/A (GPO-store only)
InboundUserNotification Enable
RemoteManagement Disable
UnicastResponseToMulticast Enable
Logging:
LogAllowedConnections Disable
LogDroppedConnections Disable
FileName %systemroot%\system32\LogFiles\Firewall\pfirewall.log
MaxFileSize 4096
Please note: when State says it’s ON – it means that property is disabled (blocked in other words)
It’s more likely that you would only want to “Turn Off Network Discovery and File Sharing Windows 10″ if your computer is a standalone PC.