windows media player added itself as a home network on my computer ...

windows media player added itself as a home network on my computer and moved all my photo to it. How do I fix it without losing my photos ?

actorstuntman said:

windows media player added itself as a home network on my computer and moved all my photo to it. How do I fix it without losing my photos ?

It hasn't actually moved your photos, what it has done is built a media library index that points to where your photos are. The actual files are still where you left them.

As WMP now appears on your network it seems you have enabled media streaming (intentionally or accidentally). If you don't need it, then you can disable media streaming. Doing so will not affect any of your photos.


Media Streaming Using Windows Media Player - Turn On or Off


Media Sharing Using Windows Media Player - Enable or Disable

I was forced to buy a Windows 10 laptop. My old Windows 7 laptop I have an external hard drive that holds my geneology going back to my 11th great grandfather, all family photos, and photos from 45 movies I'm in. It took 25 years to collect all this. My old laptop no longer recognizes my external hard drive. I can't get the computers to link as a network. The old one at first recognized both. But the new one only knows itself. The old one now thinks it is the new one. I'm dealing with prostate cancer, but losing all my work for 25 years is killing me. I thought external hard drives were for moving files to a new computer, not realizing they are formatted for only one machine, making them useless to me ,and I bought two 4 terabyte external hard drives at $90.00 apiece. I think my files are on the old external hard drive, but a system image, set my old computer back to July 2019 losing my work since. Recovery doesn't list restore points from a system image, only a system restore. I've been sick since losing my files.

Networking should work, it does on my mixed W7/W10 network.

Make both the W7 and W10 PCs members of the same Workgroup, and make sure both PCs have different names.

Workgroup Name - View and Change

Computer Name - View and Change

On the W7 machine turn off password protected sharing.

Password Protected Sharing - Turn On or Off in Windows 7

On the W7 PC share the folder(s) you want to access from the W10 PC and grant full access to the Everyone group.

File Sharing - "Share with" & "Stop Sharing" in Windows 8 | Windows 8 Help Forums

You should then see the W7 PC's shares in the W10 PC's File Explorer under Network, and be able to explore and copy files from its shares.