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Windows 11 Network Discovery Fix Guide (Multicast, DNS, Services, Router Issues)
Windows 11 changes to correct-reduce network discovery issues 11-07-2026 TG
ref ; Windows 11 Network Discovery Fix Guide (Multicast, DNS, Services, Router Issues)
Windows 11 removed older discovery protocols like SMBv1, NetBIOS browsing and LLMNR, and now relies on modern multicast‑based discovery (WS‑Discovery, SSDP, mDNS).
Many ISP routers fail to forward multicast traffic correctly, especially between Wi‑Fi and Ethernet, causing Windows 11 machines to disappear from “Network”.
This makes Windows 11 look broken when the real issue is outdated or non‑compliant router firmware — and even with a good router, fresh installs often have key discovery services turned off.
Check you have a good compliant router. "Virgin Media Hub 3/4/5 and BT Home Hub 4/5/6" routers for example are known to cause issues and cause the majority of the problems with windows 11 not seeing shares. Ask your "AI" or search the internet to see if your router is affected!!
If your router is a "known" problem, report it to your internet service provider as a FAULT, because that is what it is, no excuses.
A classic problem are machines on the same network, some connected to the Wi-Fi and others hard wired just not seeing each other, yet they are on the same network.
The following steps are things you can do to windows 11 to help, until you get a "better" router if that's the root cause, but sometimes that just isn't possible.
Your machine (PC) "name" should not exceed 14 Characters long.
Check your DNS response time. It should be in the ten's of milli seconds. Long DNS responses will break windows shares and discoveries.
Open a "CMD" windows as ADMIN.
Copy the commands below into the prompt;
nslookup cloudflare.com & for /f "tokens=2 delims=[]" %i in ('ping -n 1 cloudflare.com') do ping %i
Your result should look something like this;
Server: UnKnown
Address: 192.168.10.2
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: cloudflare.com
Addresses: 104.16.132.229
104.16.133.229
C:\Windows\System32>ping 104.16.132.229
Pinging 104.16.132.229 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 104.16.132.229: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=56
Reply from 104.16.132.229: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=56
Reply from 104.16.132.229: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=56
Reply from 104.16.132.229: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=56
Ping statistics for 104.16.132.229:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 16ms, Maximum = 18ms, Average = 17ms
Showing your DNS server IP address, in this case, 192.168.10.2, then the IP address of "cloudflare.com" which is
104.16.132.229, and the response times in "ms". The pause before the first ping reply is the DNS lookup time.
These all look good, but if your response that is getting into the hundreds or thousands there may well be a problem with your DNS server, and you should look into that.
If your DNS server is looking fine, but you are still having issues, then it is worth looking at the following to "help" windows 11 announce, discover and connect to Shares on your local network.
First create a local user account, without a Microsoft account. Use a common name across all machines and use the same password, make sure its an administrator account. Log into it and check.
in my case this is "guivert" with the same password as the user.
Open "control panel", "power options", at the top left, click on the "Choose what the power buttons do".
The click on the "Change settings that are currently unavailable", which is highlighted in blue.
Uncheck the box "Turn on fast start-up (recommended)".
At the bottom of the windows, click on "Save changes".
Close Control Panel.
From your Keyboard, press "Windows" + "R", this will open a "run" dialogue menu, in the text window "Open", type
"services.msc" and click "OK".
In the "Services" windows, we are looking for names of services that we want to startup "automatically" and one with a "delay".
Scroll down until you find;
"Function Discovery Resource Publication", right click and select "properties".
In the "General" TAB, the dropdown "startup type" should be set to "Automatic".
Click "Apply" then "OK"
Scroll down until you find;
"Network List Service", right click and select "properties".
In the "General" TAB, the dropdown "startup type" should be set to "Automatic".
Click "Apply" then "OK"
Scroll down until you find;
"Network Location Awareness (NLA)", right click and select "properties".
In the "General" TAB, the dropdown "startup type" should be set to "Automatic".
Click "Apply" then "OK"
Scroll down until you find;
"SSDP Discovery", right click and select "properties".
In the "General" TAB, the dropdown "startup type" should be set to "Automatic".
Click "Apply" then "OK"
Scroll down until you find;
"UPnP Device Host", right click and select "properties".
In the "General" TAB, the dropdown "startup type" should be set to "Automatic".
Click "Apply" then "OK"
Scroll down until you find;
"Network Connectivity Assistant", right click and select "properties".
In the "General" TAB, the dropdown "startup type" should be set to Automatic (Delayed Start).
Click "Apply" then "OK"
Then close "Services".
If there is a problem after boot up and you still cannot see your shares, run the network restart script below on the machine not announcing itself.
Create a ".BAT" file "RestartNetwork.BAT" with the following code;
Echo off
:: Auto-elevate to Admin
powershell -Command "Start-Process PowerShell -ArgumentList '-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File \"C:\dropinfolder\Scripts\RestartNetwork.ps1\"' -Verb RunAs"
exit
REM replace "C:\dropinfolder\Scripts\RestartNetwork.ps1\" with your script name and path.
REM Example C:\My-Scripts\RestartNetwork.ps1\"
Create a ".ps1" file "RestartNetwork.ps1" with the following code in the same location;
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "Restarting network discovery services..."
Write-Host "========================================"
Write-Host ""
Write-Host ""
Write-Host ""
Restart-Service -Name "FDResPub" -Force
Restart-Service -Name "netprofm" -Force
Restart-Service -Name "NlaSvc" -Force
Restart-Service -Name "NcaSvc" -Force
Write-Host "Done."
Write-Host ""
Write-Host ""
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "All checks completed."
Read-Host "Press ENTER to close"
Create a desktop shortcut to the "RestartNetwork.BAT" file for easy access and use.
If you are still having issues connecting to your shared devices on your local network, of connecting to your network via a private VPN, you may want to Give your machines a STATIC IP address. This can be very useful.
Some VPNs break local discovery because they override DNS or block multicast.
It is a bit of a last resort, but you can create a folder with batch files, one for each machine you want t connect to.
These batch file will connect you to the required machine using its IP address.
Example;-
In your DHCP server, fix the IP address of your affected machines. In this example, "MySecondPC" has a static IP address of 192.168.10.10 (obviously you will use your own IP addresses).
Create a ".BAT" file "MySecondPC.BAT" with the following code;
Echo off
REM Open Explorer window with network share set up on;
start "" explorer.exe \\192.168.10.10\
The above script can be expanded, if you know the share folder you want, like "music", then replace the script with;
Echo off
REM Open Explorer window with network share "music" set up on;
start "" explorer.exe \\192.168.10.10\music
If you create a number of them and store them in a folder, you can copy the folder with all the short cut batch files to each machine.
If you decide to keep these batch files in a network folder, that you can always see, remember you may have to run them as "Admin" or windows will block them.
Hopefully this will resolve most of your issues.