Windows 10: Network drives showing up as media devices in File Explorer old problem, once solved in the...

Hello,


This is an old problem that I thought was solved, but has just resurfaced around 3/19/2021 and old solutions do not seem to work.


As noted above, I have a couple of drives connected to my home network and they were showing up fine until about 24 hours ago. Then, suddenly, they disappeared as "computers" from the file explorer out of blue. The drives are still "connected," since they are showing up as media devices and media player can play media files off of them, but I cannot access other files on them e.g. Excel files--which is a bit problematic since I use them mostly to move work files between computers at home Some of the drives are accessible via Win-R and, strangely enough, when you are trying to save files to them, if you had saved to them recently, but not all of them, oddly enough even though they are showing up as media devices and I can access the media files on them via media player. I noticed that the network drives disappeared without the computer being restarted.


I realize that this problem is an old one, going back to the days when Homegroup got taken out and multiple solutions have been proposed since, which worked reasonably well in the past. But the current problem seems to defy them. Specifically, I've tried the following steps.


1. Enable SMB 1.0.

2. Disable Ipv6

3. Enable Netbios over TCP/IP.


Plus restarting the computer multiple times, obviously.


The computer is running Win 10 Pro 19041.867.


Thank you in advance.

:)

 

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