Enabling Network Discovery and File and Printer sharing on Windows Server

WARNING : This does not work Windows Server Core

Some folk have been arriving to this post hoping to find a solution for Windows Server Core might need to look elsewhere. I've only tested this on Windows Server 2012.

Service requirements

We need to make sure the following services are running

# Check status of services required for Network Discovery on Windows
Get-Service -DisplayName "Function Discovery Resource Publication"
Get-Service -DisplayName "DNS Client" 
Get-Service -DisplayName "SSDP Discovery" 
Get-Service -DisplayName "UPnP Device Host"

If not any are not running, start them

# Start required services
Get-Service -DisplayName "Function Discovery Resource Publication" | Start-Service
Get-Service -DisplayName "DNS Client"  | Start-Service
Get-Service -DisplayName "SSDP Discovery"  | Start-Service
Get-Service -DisplayName "UPnP Device Host" | Start-Service

Firewall requirements

Check whether respective firewall rules are both set to Allow and also Enabled

Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "Network Discovery" | ft 
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "File and Printer Sharing" | ft

If not, allow and enable them

# Set action to allow
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "Network Discovery" | Set-NetFirewallRule -Action Allow
# Enabling the rule
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "Network Discovery" | Enable-NetFirewallRule

# Set action to allow
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "File and Printer Sharing" | Set-NetFirewallRule -Action Allow 
# Enabling the rule
Get-NetFirewallRule -DisplayGroup "File and Printer Sharing" | Enable-NetFirewallRule

References

https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/2722035/you-cannot-turn-on-network-discovery-in-network-and-sharing-center-in

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