Why won't file sharing work between Windows 10 and Windows 11?

Windows 11 ships with SMBv1 and insecure guest access disabled for security, so shares that depended on them stop working. Network-profile differences and discovery services turning off make it worse.

How do I share files between Windows 10 and Windows 11?

Set both to a Private network profile, turn on network discovery and file sharing, and use a real user account (not guest). Or install a LAN app like Oxolan on both — it works identically across Windows 10 and 11 without SMB.

File Sharing Between Windows 10 and Windows 11 Not Working — How to Fix the Compatibility Issues

A Problem That Should Not Exist

Windows 10 and Windows 11 are both Microsoft operating systems. They run on the same hardware. They speak the same network protocols. And yet, file sharing between a Windows 10 and a Windows 11 machine on the same local network breaks far more often than it should.

This is not a user error. It is the result of Windows 11 changing several default settings that affect how SMB (Server Message Block) — the protocol underneath Windows file sharing — authenticates and negotiates connections.

This guide covers the most common causes of Windows 10 / Windows 11 sharing incompatibility and the steps to resolve each one.

The Most Likely Culprit: SMB Dialect Mismatch

Windows 11 disabled SMB 1.0 by default and requires SMB 2.0 or later. Windows 10 also has SMB 2.0 support, so this should not cause issues — except in older Windows 10 installations or when SMB settings have been manually changed.

Check which SMB versions are active on both machines:

Open PowerShell as administrator and run:

Get-SmbServerConfiguration | Select-Object EnableSMB1Protocol, EnableSMB2Protocol

Run this on both machines. Both should show EnableSMB2Protocol: True. If the Windows 10 machine shows SMB2 as False, run:

Set-SmbServerConfiguration -EnableSMB2Protocol $true -Confirm:$false

Do not re-enable SMB 1.0 to fix compatibility. It is a deprecated protocol with known security vulnerabilities, and no modern Windows version needs it.

Network Profile Mismatch

This is the single most overlooked cause. If the Windows 11 machine has its network classified as Public and the Windows 10 machine has it as Private (or vice versa), file sharing traffic will be blocked by one or both firewalls.

On Windows 11: Settings → Network and Internet → click your connection → Network profile type → set to Private

On Windows 10: Settings → Network and Internet → Status → Properties → set to Private

Both machines must be on Private. Check discovery settings after making this change.

Workgroup Names (Almost Certainly Not Your Problem)

You will see this advice on every forum, so it is worth closing off properly: mismatched workgroup names do not break sharing between Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Workgroup-scoped browsing belonged to the NetBIOS Computer Browser service, which went away with SMB1 in Windows 10 version 1709. Discovery now runs on WS-Discovery through Function Discovery Resource Publication, which ignores the workgroup entirely — and a typed \\PCNAME\Share path never used it in the first place. Two PCs in WORKGROUP and OFFICE see each other perfectly well.

Aligning workgroup names costs you two reboots and changes nothing. Skip it and spend the time on the causes above.

Authentication Failures: Credential Issues

When a Windows 11 machine connects to a Windows 10 share, or vice versa, Windows needs to authenticate the connection. When local accounts are used on one or both machines with different usernames, authentication silently fails and produces an unhelpful access denied error.

Fixes:

Create matching local accounts on both machines (same username and password). Windows will use these credentials automatically.
Alternatively, navigate to Control Panel → Credential Manager → Windows Credentials and manually add credentials for the target machine's hostname or IP address.
On the machine hosting the share: go to Advanced sharing settings and ensure Password protected sharing is set consistently with your authentication approach.

Windows Defender Firewall Blocking Cross-Version Traffic

The firewall does not know or care which Windows version the traffic came from — it matches on profile, direction, port and program, nothing else. What actually happens is simpler: File and Printer Sharing is enabled for the Private profile and disabled for Public by default, and hardening tools or Group Policy can switch it off for Private too. Check it on the machine hosting the share:

Open Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security
In Inbound Rules, search for "File and Printer Sharing"
Enable all rules related to that group for Private networks
Do the same on the other machine

After enabling these rules, do a fresh restart of both machines before testing.

When None of the Above Works

In some configurations — particularly after Windows updates — the steps above resolve the immediate issue but do not stay resolved. There is no single Microsoft fix for this, because it is not one bug: it is the accumulated result of a decade of SMB hardening landing on setups that predate it. Each tightening is defensible on its own; together they mean a working share can stop working after any update.

If your office runs a mix of Windows 10 and Windows 11, and maintaining consistent file access is important to your work, Oxolan is worth considering. It runs as a user-space application with its own transport layer, so it is completely unaffected by SMB dialect versions, workgroup names, or Windows authentication configurations. Windows 10 and Windows 11 machines participate equally and see each other immediately after installation.

Get Oxolan for Windows