Windows on Windows - not as sexy as it sounds

Recently I encountered a very, very annoying problem.

A Windows 10 machine refused to see a shared folder on another Windows 10 machine that every other machine on the premises could see quickly, happily, easily.

It made no sense. The new part of the equation was the target machine, not the machine with the issue.

I worked for hours through every possible cause, every vaguely potential contributing factor...I updated everything and even did battle with the machine to get it to the latest version of Windows 10 in the hope that that would know how to talk to the other new Windows 10 machine.

Nope.

I'd Googled the crap out of the issue with most solutions missing the mark or simply not working.

The things I hate mot about problems like are that:

1. They make me look like a chump

2. They are caused by some numpty in a back room making a decision without considering the ramifications

3. They cost me a lot of time that is quite simply not chargeable. I basically end up being Microsoft's (or <insert any big name IT provider's> bitch free of charge.

I'd got to the point where I suspected that not even a full and clean reload of the operating system may not fix the issue.

Then I noticed what i think was a change in the error being thrown up.

Suddenly there was an error code that, when Googled, brought up a link to the video below which guaranteed to fix the problem.

As you can imagine I was beyond skeptical at this point.

I mean, splashing around the word "guarantee" without any actual consequences seemed ...well...like pretty much every other lie on the internet.

The "three pronged" solution that it described made more sense than any of the single point and linear attempts at solving I'd seen and tried.

So I gave it a go...and it fixed the problem. WOW! Seriously. WOW!

Oh yeah, and the 4th thing I hate about problems like this, that I am willing to say out loud here, is that the sheer relief of the solution makes me forgot a lot...A LOT...of the pain involved.

...and that annoys me a lot because it means I keep doing this free work for Microsoft and their ilk instead of chucking it in and letting them support their own products properly.

I can only imagine how much free work and effort the author of this video has gone to to help out his fellow IT tech's.

Thanks...sincerely, thanks.