Re: How to share between Windows 11 and 10, over a specific cable?

On 2026-08-01 22:05, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
> 
> How would I go about creating a shared folder, that is only shared
> through the direct cable between my two computers?  I guess it's less
> about the security, and more about the speed and convenience of not
> having file transfers interrupt the internet traffic.
> 
> As far as I can tell, this is not discussed at all on the Microsoft
> QA website, nor can I find anything with a casual websearch.
> 
> So, to break down the problem statement, I don't know how to
> 
> * configure the extra ethernet ports with a different local
>    area subnet IP addresses,
> 
> * use those addresses to enable sharing only through said cable.
> 
> Is there a kind soul who can direct me to the right website or
> knowledge base where this kind of setup is discussed?
> 
> I can provide an ASCII art diagram of my LAN if requested.

Well, my first advice would have to be, don't bother with this, just 
connect the two PCs via your LAN.  If the LAN is not coping with the 
traffic, then cure that problem, rather than creating the complexities 
of the separate LAN.  So, before attempting to answer your actual 
question, I will say a few words about that first.

For us to help with that problem, we'd need to know more precisely 
exactly what is happening when you're experiencing slowdowns, as well as 
the specifications of the hardware involved.  The cause of slowdowns may 
be insufficient processing power in one or more PCs or your router, or 
old slow network gear.

Note that there are four possible current networking standards that can 
be connected by visually similar cables and connectors, each 10x the 
speed of the last, and that backward compatibility means that traffic 
will only run at the speed of the slowest link in the chain (units are 
Megabits per second and Gigabits per second, earlier experimental and 
obsolete standards are not listed here):
     Ethernet                   10Mbps
     Fast Ethernet             100Mbps
     Gigabit Ethernet        1,000Mbps or  1Gbps
     10 Gigabit Ethernet    10,000Mbps or 10Gbps

Thus, if you have two PCs each with Gigabit Ethernet ports but your 
router has only Fast Ethernet ports, everything will run at Fast 
Ethernet speeds.  Similarly, if all the hardware has Gigabit Ethernet 
ports, but a particular PC is linked to the router by an old cable, 
which is, say, Fast Ethernet, then that PC will only be able to 
communicate to the rest of the LAN at Fast Ethernet speeds.

So check out the specs of all your hardware including the cables, and if 
possible replace anything slower than Gigabit Ethernet.  You may be able 
to work out if you have any old cables by studying the LEDs on the 
ethernet ports (connectors) of your PCs or router; different hardware 
may implement different standards, but, generally speaking, green is 
good, amber is not good:

<https://www.google.com/search?q=How+do+ethernet+port+LEDs+respond+to+old+slow+cables+being+used>

Now to attempt to answer your original question ...

You would set up shares on the PCs in exactly the same way as you would 
normally set up shares on any PC, instructions are included below, the 
problems would come from the PCs being connected directly in a different 
subnet without a router.  The consequences of this are, as a minimum, as 
follows:

     1)  As there is no source of IP addresses on the separate subnet, 
each PC will assign itself a default IP in a separate 'Link Local' 
subnet range 169.254.0.0/16 which will be different from the PC's IP 
address of the LAN proper.

     2)  OOTTOMH I am not sure which firewall settings on each PC will 
have to be altered to allow the second subnet range through, but this is 
something that will have to checked out.

Windows Sharing Instructions
============================

IMO, M$'s default sharing arrangements have always been dangerously 
insecure.  What follows is the comparatively secure
way that I've always set up sharing, ever since Windows 2000.

Note: These are W7 instructions, other more recent versions of Windows 
will obviously be similar but not exactly the same, because of M$'
pointless and idiotic habit of hiding all the control levers in
different places with every new edition of Windows, thus forcing
people continually to relearn everything they've known for years. (Can
you imagine the catastrophic chaos that would result on the roads if
car manufacturers decided to do that?).

In what follows, I assume that you want to create shares on each PC
visible to others, and that none are work PCs authenticating to a domain
controller server.

On each PC:

1)    Go into ...
     Control Panel, All Control Panel Items,System,
     Advanced system settings, Computer Name, Change
... and ensure that name and workgroup are changed to something
memorable from the defaults, and that the latter is the same for all
the machines that you wish to share files together.

2)    Any user wishing to access a share on a PC must have a user
account on that PC, so set up the necessary accounts up on each PC,
giving them the same logon user id and passwd as they normally use on
their own PC.  (If on a particular PC you want a user only to be able
to access a share, but not be able to sign on to it, you still need
his/her account to exist, but then it must be added to a block list in
that PC's security policy  -  however, this may not be possible on
some lower cost editions of Windows, and is beyond the scope of these
notes).

3)    Go into ...
     Control Panel, All Control Panel Items,
     Network and Sharing Center, Advanced sharing settings
... and set the following:
     Network discovery
         Probably on, unless reason otherwise;
     File and printer sharing
         Probably on, unless reason otherwise;
     Public folder sharing
         Probably off, unless reason otherwise;
     Media streaming
         Probably off, unless reason otherwise;
     File sharing connections
         Use 128-bit, unless reason otherwise;
     Password protected sharing
         Turn on;
     HomeGroup connections
         Use user accounts and passwords.

4)    On each directory or drive of each machine that you want to
share, creating subdirectories for this as required ...
         <rt-click>, Share with,
             Advanced sharing, Advanced sharing;
         Select Share this folder;
         Type a suitable share name
             (Note:  ending it with a '$' will hide it from
             users casually browsing from other Windows PCs,
             but Linux users may still see it via Samba);
         Type a suitable comment, if required;
         Click Permissions, remove the relatively insecure
         default permissions offered, and then click ...
             Add, Advanced, Find Now
         ... and by <click>ing and <ctrl-click>ing select and add
         the following:
             Admininstrators
             System
             Authenticated Users
         ... and then give them the following permissions ...
             Admininstrators        Full Control
             System            Full Control
             Authenticated Users    Read or Read/Change
                             as required

5)    If necessary, but DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING ON THE WINDOWS FOLDER OR 
OTHER SYSTEM FOLDERS (hopefully you're not trying to share these anyway, 
not normally recommended) including user folders but sub-directories of 
the latter that you've created especially to share are perfectly safe ...

<rt-click> the drive or directory being shared
and select ...
         Properties
         Security
... and ensure the above permissions are replicated on the drive or
folder itself.

Notes:

To prevent a particular account from logging on to a particular PC  - 
if, say, you want a child to be able to log on to a share on your PC so 
the child must have his user account credentials existing on the PC, but 
you don't want the child actually logging on to the PC itself  -  then 
you must be running a version of Windows that allows access to the 
Security Policy management console (from memory, Home versions do not, 
and note that I haven't needed to do this in quite a while, so I can't 
guarantee these instructions, but IMS they're correct):
   1  Get a Run dialog, say by <Win R>
   2  secpol.msc <Enter>
   3  Security Settings, Local Policies, User Rights Assignment
   4  Add particular username to 'Deny logon locally' list, Ok
        (by default this has only 'Guest')

To prevent logging on using an M$ account, again you need to get into 
the Security Policy management console:
   1  Get a Run dialog, say by <Win R>
   2  secpol.msc <Enter>
   3  Security Settings, Local Policies, Security Options
   4  Click 'Accounts: Block Microsoft accounts'
   5  Select from the drop-down list ...
        'Users can’t add or log on with Microsoft accounts'
      ... Ok

To allow XP and earlier to connect to more recent versions of Windows 
such as 10, or those between which are running Microsoft Security 
Essentials, you have to enable SMBv1.  To do this ...

Windows 10+: Run Powershell as Admin and enter the following:
   Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName SMB1Protocol

Windows 7-:  SMBv1 is enabled by default, so normally no change is 
needed, however, ISTR that installing Microsoft Security Essentials 
disables it, in which case you have to set or make a registry change to 
enable it, as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

Registry entry: SMB1
REG_DWORD: 0 = Disabled
REG_DWORD: 1 = Enabled
Default: 1 = Enabled (No registry key is created)

Windows 8 versions:  I'm not sure about and cannot test here, but one or 
the other of the above should work.

In all versions of Windows, allegedly you have to reboot after making 
the changes, but perhaps restarting the service may suffice; again, as 
it's a while since I had to do this, I can't definitely say that this 
would work:
   net stop Server
   net start Server

-- 

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