It is quite common for a house to have two or more computers connected to the same Internet network. In these cases, it can be a very good idea to connect them together to be able to share files in a very simple way. We explain how to connect two computers in a network with Windows 10 .
Connect two computers in Windows 10 step by step
First of all, we have to make sure that all computers are turned on and connected to our Internet network. After that, we can start to configure the Windows 10 Network and Sharing Center.
To do this we can go to the control panel and look for the option " Center for networks and shared resources "
The next step will be to enter the option " Change advanced sharing settings ". Once inside, we just have to check the options to allow file sharing. The following pictures will help you understand it.
Once we have completed all the previous steps, we can proceed to establish communication between the different teams that we have at home. The first thing to do is to check that there is communication between them, something we can do with the " cmd " command window and the " ipconfig " command .
This will return the IP addresses of both computers, the value is in the " IPv4 address " section.
This IP address is the one that we will use to verify that there is a connection between both computers. For this we only have to use the command "ping + the IP address". If all goes well, we will see that the four packages that are sent are received correctly.
With this we have already verified that there is a connection between both computers, we can continue with the tutorial.
If there is visibility between both teams, you should be able to establish a connection between them without problems . The next step is to go to the Windows 10 file explorer. Once inside, enter the "Network" section and you should see all the computers connected to your Internet network. If they don't appear, press F5 to refresh the folder and they should appear.
In the event that they do not appear, you can resort to a simple trick. This trick consists of going to the address bar and typing the following
\\ ip of the equipment
For example, suppose the IP that we have seen before is 192.168.3.501, then we would write the following:
\\ 192.168.3.50
With this we will be directly accessing the team we want to connect to. A window will appear asking for the user credentials, that is, the username and password.
We will need the computer we want to connect to have a user password , otherwise we will receive an error message and it will be impossible for us to connect. This is an important security measure that Windows 10 includes, as we do not want anyone to be able to connect to our PC without permission.
It is true that it is a bit of pain to have to enter the password each time, luckily there is a way to avoid it. For this we have to go back to the " Network and Sharing Center " tool that we used before. Once inside, just check the option " Disable sharing with password protection ."
How to make teams display graphically
Lately Windows 10 has been failing quite a bit when it comes to making network computers display graphically from File Explorer. We can access them with their IP address as we have seen, but it is quite an inconvenient thing to do. We are going to try to solve the problem that prevents them from being displayed graphically.
This is something we can do quite quickly. The first thing we need is to activate an option to make the different computers connected to the same computer network visible. To find this option we go to the start menu and look for " enable or disable Windows features ."
A window will open from which we can configure various Windows 10 parameters. Find and mark the option indicated in the following image. After that, click on "Accept" to apply the changes. It will surely ask you to restart the operating system in order to install the necessary components. You will have to make this change on all the Windows 10 computers that you want to connect to each other.
This trick seems to be not working too well in the latest versions of Windows 10, probably due to a bug that they have yet to fix. In my case it has not worked, so I will have to find another way to do it.
Fortunately, we can always turn to Windows 10 shortcuts .
It is enough to create a new shortcut in any folder in Windows 10 and link it with the IP of the computer to which we want to connect . Then just give the shortcut a name and you're done. The advantage of this method is that we can drag it wherever we want to have it.
Share folders on our local network
After having linked both teams together, we can select which folders we want to be shared between the two teams. The process is very simple, you only have to follow a few steps.
The first thing is to go to the folder that we want to share, once in it, we click with the right mouse button, enter " Properties " and then the " Share " tab . We will see the option to share the folder with different users.
A window will open with a drop-down menu to select the users we want to add to the shared folder. When we have selected them, we click on " Share " so that the configuration is applied.
This is an excellent way to decide which users can access each of our folders, something ideal if more people live in our house and we want to avoid prying eyes.
This is all you need to do to connect two computers in a network with Windows 10. If you liked the post you can share it so that it helps more people who need it.