Change to Public Network

When you change the current network setting from home or work to public, file sharing is disabled as is the printer sharing. This prevents your data from showing up on other computers that are probably searching for an open hard disk. To set the network to public, click on the network icon in the system tray. Then click on the Open Network and Sharing Center. In the dialog box that appears, check under network to see if the network is already public. The icon for public is a park bench while for a home network, it is a home icon. If it is home or work, click on it and from the resultant dialog box, select public network.