>If memory serves it was with Win2K that MS got serious about networking. They exposed early builds to the public Internet - I think it was windows2000beta.com - and invited one and all to attack it. The results of that led to huge improvements in the MS networking stack.

>Networking was "easier" back in the day because all networked computers basically had their legs spread wide open. Now that security is a little more top-of-mind, networking is more complex. Security requires reliability.

True, but we had to suffer through those years. The last easy yet reliable networking before W2k was to boot into W98 DOS and run only tcp-ip (without the dreaded NetBeui, which was an utter mess for anything above three machines).

And the previous DOS based networks were reliable (specially the RPTI from Taiwan, they were near perfect but required their own NICs) in the sense that once you set them up they worked forever and didn't develop quirks. And in those years security wasn't invented yet, because, basically, nobody out there knew enough to be a danger. Except the kids who'd bring floppies to work to play some virus infested games, but they learned fast enough, and we had then McAffee churning out protection faster than the viruses spread here.

>For lurkers, networking problems in Windows Vista or later are most commonly due to:
>
>- Not running on a trusted/home/work network i.e. failing to select the correct option when prompted on connection to a new network

The stuff is so confusing even to me. I still have one XP machine here (wife's old laptop) and if I went for home network that machine is left in the dark. It doesn't explicitly say anything about the requirements for other machines, it's the usual aesopean language spoken in Redmond. I just wonder how do these guys speak amongst themselves, do they have the orwelian ability to suddenly call the spade some new name starting monday morning.

Just an example: now that I've reinstated W7 on that laptop, which is primarily for Skype, I set up the headset. Looking for the place where to turn the microphone boost on, I came to control panel, and when I finally found where to set up the microphone, I saw the "configure" button. That must be it, right? Nope, it takes you to a different page on the control panel which is all about speech recognition. Which then has an "audio devices" link (behaves like a button, looks like a link) which takes you back to the audio devices dialog. It's under "properties" there, yet another dialog, on the levels tab. And there, the graphic showing the current level of sound is on page2 (recording), not on the levels tab.

That from a company which boasts spending millions on exploring and developing ergonomy and usability of its GUI. Just finding where things are is amazing... i.e. you are lost in a maze. This may sound like my usual rant - you surely remember I wrote at least a dozen of them every year for the last two decades (and there was, luckily, a decade before that when I would have, had I only had Internet then). But after a month running linux as my primary OS, I see that things can actually be done in a logical, easy to follow, way. As a band here wrote in a song, "stvari bolje hodaju kad ne misliš na prodaju" (things walk better when you don't keep thinking of sales).

>- Incorrect setup of network shares (e.g. incorrect permissions). Usually a result of manual setup and missing some settings, can usually be fixed by using the sharing wizard
>
>- Problems with 3rd-party firewalls - disable completely while troubleshooting

None.

>- If you want to send files from W10 directly to your Linux host, the host must run a protocol Windows understands e.g. SMB/CIFS [Samba], or run an FTP or NFS server and use appropriate client software on W10. Of course the Linux host firewall must be configured to allow client access

Blind spot. It would probably be the easiest to just run a ftp server, but in my mind ftp is always somewhere out there, not something one uses at home. Forgot completely.

But then I also forgot that this W10 was initially a W7 machine that I set up myself, so the disk has two partitions, and the important stuff will remain untouched on the larger partition. So I spent whole sunday afternoon and evening juggling gigabytes around, remembering only that I'll be installing a windows afresh and it will wipe everything.