Windows 11 Network Discovery Not Working — How to Actually Fix It

Why Windows 11 Network Discovery Keeps Turning Itself Off

If you have spent any time trying to share files between Windows 11 computers, you have probably seen this: you open File Explorer, click Network, and either nothing shows up or you get the message "Network discovery is turned off."

You turn it back on. It works for a day. Then it stops again.

This is not a bug you did something wrong to cause. It is a fundamental architectural problem with how Windows handles network discovery services — and Microsoft has not fixed it in years.

Here is what is actually happening.

The Root Cause

Windows network discovery depends on four background services running simultaneously:

Function Discovery Resource Publication (FDResPub)
SSDP Discovery (SSDPSRV)
UPnP Device Host (upnphost)
DNS Client (Dnscache)

Any one of these stopping — due to an update, a power event, or Windows deciding to optimize resources — causes network discovery to silently fail. The toggle in Settings shows "On" but nothing works.

There are also two prerequisites people miss that make the services irrelevant if they're wrong:

Network profile must be Private. On a Public profile, discovery is disabled by policy no matter what the services are doing. A profile silently flipping to Public is one of the most common causes — covered in depth in the network discovery explainer and computers not showing up in the network.
Firewall must allow "Network Discovery." The inbound rule group can be disabled by hardening tools or Group Policy.

Diagnose Before You Fix

Two quick checks tell you which layer is broken:

Can you reach a PC by IP but not by name? \\192.168.x.x works, \\PC-NAME doesn't → name resolution, not discovery services. See error 0x80070035 and what mDNS is.
Can others see you, but you can't see them (or vice-versa)? Asymmetry means advertising is broken on one side — Function Discovery Resource Publication stopped. That specific failure is Event ID 7036.

The Manual Fix

First confirm the prerequisites: network profile Private, and the Windows Defender Firewall "Network Discovery" rule group enabled (Control Panel → Windows Defender Firewall → Allow an app → check Network Discovery for Private).

Then open Services (Win + R → services.msc) and set each of these four services to Automatic startup:

Function Discovery Resource Publication
SSDP Discovery
UPnP Device Host
DNS Client

Then restart each service and toggle network discovery off and back on in Settings → Network and Internet → Advanced network settings. Also disable Fast Startup (Power Options → Choose what the power buttons do) and do one cold boot — Fast Startup is a frequent reason the services come back in a half-started state.

This works. Until Windows updates and resets one of the services again.

Making the Manual Fix Persist

Since updates reset service startup types, the only way to make the manual fix survive is to re-assert it automatically. In a domain, Group Policy preferences can enforce service startup. Without a domain, a simple scheduled task that runs at startup and sets the four services to Automatic + Running is the pragmatic workaround. It does not stop the resets — it just heals them on every boot. The Windows 11 network settings guide and networking checklist document this for a whole office.

Why the Manual Fix Keeps Breaking

Windows updates frequently reset service startup types. A cumulative update in late 2024 was particularly aggressive about this, affecting thousands of office setups that had previously working network discovery.

There is no permanent fix inside Windows itself. You are fighting the OS.

A Better Approach

This is exactly the problem Oxolan was built to solve. Instead of relying on Windows network discovery — which depends on those four fragile services — Oxolan uses its own discovery protocol, so the updates that keep stopping those services don't take your sharing down with them. (The installer adds the one firewall rule Oxolan needs automatically.)

Install it on each PC once. Every machine running Oxolan appears in the sidebar automatically, regardless of whether Windows network discovery is working. No services to babysit, no settings that reset after updates.

Get Oxolan for Windows · See pricing

This is the structural fix argued in Oxolan vs Windows file sharing: rather than babysitting four fragile services forever, remove the dependency on them. Keep a stable file server if you have one — it's peer discovery that keeps breaking, and that's the part with a clean alternative.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do computers show up in Network one day and disappear the next? One of the four discovery services stopped running. Windows does this automatically during updates or power events.

Does this affect Windows 10 too? Yes, but it is significantly worse on Windows 11 due to changes in how the OS manages background services.

Will setting services to Automatic permanently fix it? Usually not. Windows updates reset service configurations. It typically breaks again within a few weeks.

Is there a Group Policy fix? There are Group Policy settings that help in domain environments, but they require IT admin access and do not work on Home editions of Windows.