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User Manual

How to enable access to a network drive from Windows 11

In Windows 11, you may encounter errors when connecting to and accessing network shares or a USB drive connected to a router.

This situation is typically caused by Windows 11 having Server Message Block Signing enabled by default and Guest Access for the SMB client turned off. In this case, you will not be able to access the shared folder. These policies help protect your computer from unsafe or malicious devices on the network.

By default, SMB Signing on the server side of the router is disabled, so when the client requests the SMB Signing option from the server, an access error is returned when accessed in anonymous mode (Guest Access).

Perform the following setup on the Windows 11 OS side:

  1. Bring up the SMB Signing settings on the Windows client using PowerShell under Administrator and turn off the mandatory use of SMB Signing. If you have already done this configuration earlier, then it is recommended that you skip straight to the second step.

    Notice

    Type powershell in the Run dialogue box (open it with the Win+R shortcut). Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter on your keyboard or click OK to open PowerShell with elevated privileges. If prompted by the Account Control (UAC) dialogue box, click Yes to grant administrative privileges.

    Use the command:

    Get-SmbClientconfiguration | fl EnableSecuritySignature,RequireSecuritySignature
    smb-win11-01.png

    EnableSecuritySignature = True — the client will use SMB Signing only if a server requires it (the router's SMB server does not require signing);

    RequireSecuritySignature = False — mandatory use of SMB Signing is disabled.

    If the SMB Signing option is enabled (i.e. RequireSecuritySignature = True), you need to disable the mandatory use of SMB Signing. To do this, use the command:

    Set-SmbClientConfiguration -RequireSecuritySignature $false

    Warning

    The SMB Signing option causes additional workload on the client and server, and thus reduces the speed of writing and reading data on the local network via the SMB protocol. After changing the settings, the computer must be restarted.

  2. Enable Guest Access for SMB Client in Windows 11.

    In the PowerShell command shell, as Administrator, run the command:

    Set-SmbClientConfiguration -EnableInsecureGuestLogons $true
    smb-win11-02.png

After running the above commands and restarting the computer, check SMB access to the network drive.

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