Windows 10 Home Group between Win 8, win 10 and Win 7

davidhk129

Senior Member
I have 2 laptops......
1. Running Win 8.1 Pro solely.
2. Running dual boot Win 7 and Win 10 TP Enterprise 9879.

All 3 OSs have joined the home group.
My problem is........ Win 8.1 and Win 10 can see each other as well as Win 7, BUT Win 7 can't see them.

I had read some time ago that Win 7 can join Win 8 but only Win 8 can see win 7, not the other way around.
True ?
If not, what is the solution ?
 
True… there are work arounds but it depends on what you want shared because windows is anal about which system is in charge of the network.

Simple option, get a router that allows usb drives (tp-link wdr4300) then put a 16 g usb stick into it and any windows can read/ write to the stick by default…. Ubuntu can also but that takes some extra mucking around.
 
Simple option, get a router that allows usb drives (tp-link wdr4300) then put a 16 g usb stick into it and any windows can read/ write to the stick by default

Really, I had no idea....I'll be doing that for sure. Would that work for a USB HDD?
 
True… there are work arounds but it depends on what you want shared because windows is anal about which system is in charge of the network.

Simple option, get a router that allows usb drives (tp-link wdr4300) then put a 16 g usb stick into it and any windows can read/ write to the stick by default…. Ubuntu can also but that takes some extra mucking around.



Thank you.
 
Really, I had no idea....I'll be doing that for sure. Would that work for a USB HDD?
Yes most modern usb drive cases are windows share compatible now days, for example;

Work gave me a Toshiba 500g (canvio) drive… this drive is formatted as a ntsf and has its own usb3 cable.
canvio.jpg


Step 1; plug the usb cable into one of my two usb ports on the back of my Tp-link wdr4300 router and open the web browser to see that the drive is detected by the router.

Step 2; Decide how you want to share the files… for home windows use I recommend a mapped network as this is simple while still being safe i.e. you can just un-plug the drive to take to a m8's house without mucking up your file system and then it will reconnect when you plug it back in again.

Step 3; Open the map drive wizard… I'll use my windows 8.1 but it looks almost the same in any version of windows.
Screenshot (46).png


Step 4; Pick a drive letter for the mapped drive, I'll pick T for Toshiba and type \\####### (192.168.0.1 is the internal number for my router) then \%%%%% (name of the share as it appears in the router browser window)… tp-link routers name shares as volume 1, 2 etc but all routers work in a simular way and yes you can change the share name to work drive or something else but for simple setup this is fine.
Screenshot (44).png

Step 5; the drive is now seen by the router as an everyone permissions share and windows (in this example) sees it as the T drive.

Screenshot (45).png


Note 1, there are other ways to share a drive across windows machine but again I recommend mapping for any usb drive i.e. non-permanent because the other methods can get upset when the drive disappears.

Note 2, my tplink router is only a usb 2 port so that slows down the transfer of files to the hdd but if I un-plug it and connect it into a usb3 port at a m8's house then I would get the full speed again… personally I find the 16g stick ($20) is plenty for sharing music and photo between my home systems and my daughter would soon full up a 500g drive with junk but your needs may be different.
 
Way cool ussnorway! Thanks.

You might want to dress that up a bit and stick that in the tutorial section of the forum.....nice job.
 
Back
Top