My home network has a number of Win 10 and Linux PCs. All PCs can communicate and share files with each other, except for my main Win 10 PC. It can see and and change shares on all the other PCs but none of them can 'see' it or communicate with it. Attempts to connect with it from within File Explorer from another Win 10 PC using either \\hostname\sharename or \\IPv4-address\sharename fail after some minutes with the error message "Windows cannot access \\hostname\sharename. Check the spelling .... click Diagnose" Running the troubleshooter reports that the problem "Windows can't communicate with the device or resource (IPv4-address)" has been detected. More details report: "It is available but is not responding to connection attempts. A firewall or network security policy on the remote computer might be blocking the connection on port 'file and printer sharing resource'." Over the months that I have been trying to find a solution to this problem I have read and followed many 10s of suggested solutions covering network sharing configuration, system services, hardware drivers, SMB1 drivers, network detection settings, firewall settings, router configuration and so on. Not one of these suggestions has addressed the issue. I now need some advice on where to look for a procedure which will allow me to do effective problem source identification, rather than the current approach, which seems to be trying things at random, without following a properly thought out path to problem determination. Any advice?
