Unable to access shared folder without user name and password in windows 10

Question is old but none of the answers fully cover the problem. There are a number of ways to accomplish this. There is one that works every time.

  1. Press the Windows Key key to open the Start menu and, without clicking anything, type sharing.
  2. At the top should be Manage advanced sharing settings. Click that.
  3. Expand the heading for All Networks and find the section called Password protected sharing.
  4. Set that to Turn off password protected sharing.
  5. Click Save changes.
  6. You may need to restart or unshare and reshare for the settings to take effect.

Also make sure that the file permissions of the files and folders being shared also allow access to Everyone. File permissions are managed separately from share permissions and whichever is more restrictive wins.

This should work in Windows 7 through 10 without issue.


Additional Notes:

In versions of windows before Vista, file sharing was unpassworded by default. If you shared files everyone on the same network as your computer could access (and alter) files in the share as they saw fit. Starting in Vista, in addition to a number of other security improvements for sharing, MS made it so sharing without a password was unavailable by default. This is the setting that reverts to the old behavior. Obviously, it shouldn't be turned off without also taking other steps to secure the shared files in shared network environments. Sharing with Everyone in such cases would be unwise.


You have to turn media streaming on to access shared folders/files.