Trying to share a folder over home network in windows 11

[attebregge]

I've created a shared folder on a pc on my home network but I'm unable to access it from a second pc. I have selected network profile type: private and turned on network discovery and file and printer sharing in the advanced sharing settings for both machines. I can see machine name I'm sharing from listed under network in file explorer on both. On the pc I'm sharing from, when I double click on the machine name I can see the shared folder. On the machine I want to share to, when I click the machine with the folder I want to share in the network tab I get an error: Windows cannot access \\MY_MACHINE_NAME... any suggestions?

 

[attebregge]

Update: the shared folder works in one direction but not the other: I can access a share on machine A from machine B, but not vice versa (Windows cannot access \\machine_name)

 

[Trouble]

"cannot access" is kind of vague and I suspect, since it isn't an access denied, that it may be linked to NetBIOS / WINS name resolution, which can be a bit unreliable.
Try it using IP address and see if that succeeds ( i.e. \\192.168.1.xxx) whatever the IP address is of the machine(s) involved.