Windows 10: Why do I need to enable insecure guest logon and can I avoid it

Hi,

I have a home network with 3 computers. 2 of them run win 10 home (laptop and HTPC) and the other one runs win 10 pro (desktop). the HTPC computer is sharing a couple folders with the everyone user group. On the laptop I can access these files with no issues, the desktop however can not access them. It throws the error ´You can´t access this shared folder because your organizations security policies block unauthenticated guest access....´. That is until I enable insecure guest logons in the group policy editor on the desktop. After this I can access with no issues.

I only encounted this issue yesterday when I reset my win 10 pro desktop, using the settings ´reset this pc´ option. before this there was no need to enable the insecure guest logon to access the shared folders on the HTPC.

So, my question is why did this start happening? and why does it need me to enable this option on my win 10 pro desktop but not the win 10 home laptop?

Also, this does not sound like a good fix security wise, is there a way to get my desktop to access the shared folders without needing to enable this option? It seems like for some strange reason the HTPC (laptop too) is being seen as a guest user or something, when this is not the case. my desktop (and the other computers as well) is setup with a local admin user account.

Thanks,

:)

 

Is Enabling Insecure Guest Logons Okay?

Could Somebody tell me If I enable insecure guest logons, Is that Ok?

 

Is Enabling Insecure Guest Logons Okay?

If you are the only one using it then there is no reason to use a public share. A public share is for being able to access a share from numerous PCs without authentication (and you are not able to provide everyone with a user/password access to the NAS).
That means if someone hacks your router (which they do by the millions) or intrude in your network/PC by other means they can access this public share (no matter what you set in Windows). If you use it from "outside" your network (as they mention "Cloud")
you should definitely not use a Public share.

You should be able to move the files to the private share area or to expand the private share area to it. No? I don't know how their devices work.

Also note, that "enable insecure guest logons" is not the same as enabling the guest account in Windows as the IA seems to think. It is *not* for allowing unauthenticated access to your (usually disabled) guest account in your Windows system!

This setting tells the client (your PC) that it can try an insecure unauthenticated login at *another* server (your NAS). That's all. And, as I said, it should be "enabled" by default as "not configured" means "enabled".

 

Is Enabling Insecure Guest Logons Okay?

This doesn't really make sense from technical documentation. Look at what the explanation says:

If you enable this policy setting or if you do not configure this policy setting, the SMB client will allow insecure guest logons.

So, before you enabled it, it was "not configured"!

So, you should see the same behavior whether or not you "enable" it. Unless it was already configured and set to "disabled" which is not the default!

About the NAS: do you have set user accounts on it? I would assume that you don't have any user accounts on it. Maybe everybody has access to it? If you create the exact same user account with same password on the NAS that you use on your Windows machine and
enable password-protected sharing in Windows you should be able to access the file shares just fine.