Computers Not Showing Up in Network on Windows 11 — Why It Happens and How to Fix It

The Symptom Most People Experience

You open File Explorer and click Network in the left sidebar. The pane loads. It spins. Then either nothing appears, or only your own machine shows up.

Other PCs on the same network are clearly online — you can ping them by IP address, you can reach shared printers — but they simply do not appear in the Network browser. Windows 11 made this problem more common than it ever was under Windows 10.

This article explains what is actually happening and gives you the steps most likely to resolve it.

Why This Happens: The Real Cause

Windows 11 uses a discovery protocol called Function Discovery to locate computers on the local network and populate the Network folder. This system depends on a chain of background services — and the chain is remarkably easy to break.

The most common causes, in order of frequency:

1. Network Location is set to Public. When a network is classified as Public, Windows deliberately blocks discovery to protect you on networks like airport WiFi. The problem is that Windows 11 sometimes re-classifies a trusted office network as Public after a restart or update. Discovery stops silently, with no obvious notification.

2. Discovery services are stopped or set to Manual startup. Four services must be running simultaneously for discovery to work: Function Discovery Resource Publication, SSDP Discovery, UPnP Device Host, and DNS Client. Any one of them stopping causes the entire system to fail.

3. SMB 1.0 is disabled (as it should be) but nothing replaced it. Older guides tell you to enable SMB 1.0 to make computers appear. This is genuinely bad advice — SMB 1.0 has critical, unpatched security vulnerabilities. The actual issue is that the discovery mechanism was never properly configured.

4. Windows Firewall is blocking discovery traffic. Windows Firewall has a set of rules specifically for network discovery. If a Windows Update has reset these rules, or if a third-party security tool modified them, discovery traffic is silently dropped.

Fixing the Network Location

This is the first thing to check.

1. Open Settings → Network and Internet → Properties (under your current connection)
2. Ensure the network is set to Private, not Public
3. Once set to Private, toggle Network Discovery off and on again in Advanced network settings

If your machine is on a domain, this step is controlled by Group Policy and may require IT administrator access.

Fixing the Discovery Services

Press Win + R, type services.msc, and press Enter. Find each of these services and set their Startup type to Automatic, then click Start if they are not already running:

• Function Discovery Resource Publication
• SSDP Discovery
• UPnP Device Host
• DNS Client

After starting all four, restart File Explorer: open Task Manager, find Windows Explorer in the Processes tab, and click Restart.

Checking Windows Firewall Rules

Open the Start menu and search for Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security. In Inbound Rules, look for rules with "Network Discovery" in the name. Ensure all of them are Enabled, not disabled.

If you have disabled the Windows Firewall entirely and are using a third-party security suite, confirm that the suite allows mDNS and SSDP traffic on UDP ports 5353 and 1900.

Why This Keeps Coming Back

Even if you fix all of the above, Windows 11 has a documented tendency to revert these settings after cumulative updates. Service startup types are reset, network location shifts back to Public, and firewall rules are occasionally modified by security patches.

This is not unusual or your fault. It reflects the architectural fragility of the Windows discovery stack, which was designed for a different era and has not been meaningfully modernised.

A More Durable Approach

If your team spends regular time troubleshooting Windows network visibility, the underlying system is working against you. Oxolan sidesteps the Windows discovery stack entirely. It uses its own lightweight protocol to locate machines on the local network — one that does not depend on Function Discovery services, network location settings, or firewall rules for discovery traffic.

Once installed on each machine, peers appear automatically in the Oxolan sidebar. Whether Windows Network shows anything or not becomes irrelevant.

Get Oxolan for Windows

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I fix this without admin access? Some steps — particularly changing network location and modifying firewall rules — require administrator rights. Adjusting service startup types also requires admin access.

I can see some computers but not others. Why? This usually means discovery services are running on some machines but not others, or that some machines have their network set to Private while others are on Public. Check each affected machine individually.

Does enabling SMB 1.0 actually fix this? It can restore visibility in some legacy scenarios, but it is not recommended. SMB 1.0 is a known attack vector and Microsoft actively discourages its use. The proper fix is to configure discovery services correctly.

This worked for a week and broke again. Why? A Windows Update most likely reset a service startup type or modified a firewall rule. This is the core reason the manual fix is not reliably permanent.