If you’re like most people, you probably use Windows 8 to access your files and folders. But if you’re like me, you also use it to share files with other people. And if you’re like most people, you probably don’t have any passwords for those shared files. Fortunately, there’s a way to create network file shares without passwords in Windows 8. And it’s easy too: just open the File Sharing app and click on the three lines in the top left corner of the screen. Then type in a name for your new share and click on the greenShare button. Now that your new share is created, all you need to do is access it from anywhere in your computer by typing its name into the address bar and clicking on the link that appears. You’ll be able to see all of your shared files and folders as well as any changes that have been made to them since they were last accessed.
We have all had to connect to a network share at some point only to have the authentication dialog pop up. There are many ways around it, for example mapping a network drive, but if you have a lot of users connecting to copy some files you may want to disable the password dialog instead of distributing your password.
Disabling Password Protected Sharing
If you try to connect to any modern Windows OS that’s hosting a network share you will probably be greeted with an authentication dialog. If you try to type in your current username and password and hit enter, it just bounces back and asks for your credentials again.
To make things worse, this happens even if you you have given the Everyone security principle on the remote machine Full Access to the share.
What you are experiencing is normal Windows behavior–on the recent versions of Windows Microsoft enabled password protected sharing by default, so although “Everyone” has access to that particular file share you need to authenticate as a user on the remote machine before the share permissions are even evaluated. To disable this behavior go to the machine that is hosting the file share, right click on the Network Notification Icon and select Open Network and Sharing Center from the context menu.
Then click on the Change advanced sharing settings Link in the left hand panel.
Now expand the All Networks section.
Finally switch the radial button to the Turn off password protected sharing setting and click Save changes.
That’s all there is to it, now anyone will be able to connect to the share without a password.
