Network Discovery is feature in Windows Vista and if you enable this feature, your Vista computers can see and discover other computers, other computers will be able to see this Vista computer as well. After enabling this feature, the discovered network devices will be displayed in Network Map.
There are two Network Discovery settings: on and off. Here is how you turn on Network Discovery:
- From the Vista Start Orb select Control Panel
- From the Control Panel left-click Network and Sharing Center
- Quicker Network & Sharing Access:
- Locate the Network Status icon in the system tray.
- Left click the icon and select Network and Sharing Center.
- Select View network status and tasks
- Under Sharing and Discovery click the drop down arrow. Here you will see the following options:
- Turn on network discovery
- Turn off network discovery
- Click the radio button beside Turn on network discovery
- This will prompt the User Account Control (UAC) to bring the “Windows needs your permission to continue…” window to come up. Click Continue.
- Wait a moment for Vista to make the changes, and you should then be able to see other computers, devices, shared files and folders on your network.