Solved: Win 10 Direct PC Connection

[Reginald_001]

For 2 years I've used my Windows XP 'Audio' machine through Remote Desktop.

I used XP because that's how this custom built system was designed, it has a lot of audio software tailored to the hardware in my studio.

It's directly connected to my Windows 10 Home PC, which I use for games and work using a cross cable (UTP - cat5).

 

Since last week suddenly my remote desktop stopped working.

I checked my network config and nothing has changed...

I tried different cables, same thing...

When I PING the target address I get 'General Failure'.

Both on XP and on Win 10 it says the network is 'connected'.

 

I suspect Windows Update broke this with some kind of new security update.

Windows 10 also keeps saying my most private connection (2 PC's directly hooked up to each other) is PUBLIC, which makes it so nothing works to begin with.

I tried Powershell commands to push this back to 'private', but this does not work. I need to reboot to apply the settings, but after the reboot it's set back to 'PUBLIC'.

 

Long story short: Something that worked for 2 years suddenly doesn't work any more without any changes from my end.

I tried to go into system restore, but it's disabled and GRAYED OUT on my machine, likely System Restore is not possible for people using Windows 10 Home... *sigh*

 

Can anyone help me sort this mess out?

[Reginald_001]

Solved it. Turned out it was the NordVPN software, which had automagically turned on the option 'Invisibility on LAN', which basically meant blocking any other traffic than HTTP(s) traffic. Turned it off and.. Kablam! My ping was resolving instead of giving me 'general failure'.