Sharing the PowerChurch folder in Windows 11 and Server 2025

This article is part of a series - Networking Instructions for PowerChurch Plus. If your server/host computer is not Windows 11 or Server 2025, go back to the main article and click the appropriate link for Server Setup for your Windows version.

Microsoft has recently made changes that no longer allow the use of unsecured network
shares, to protect against virus attacks. In order to securely share folders across your network, the best practice is to create and utilize a local user. Below will document the process of creating that local account in 2 different ways.

To create a local user using the windows settings , do the following:

• Open the Windows Settings.
• Select Accounts from the left hand navigation menu and then "Other Users".
• Under the "Other users" section, select Add Account.
• Choose "I don't have this person's sign-in information".
• Choose "Add a user without a microsoft account".
• Enter the desired username and password here. An example of a username could be "PowerChurch" or "OfficeShares" if you intend to share more than just Powerchurch over the network. You will also be asked to fill in some security questions, do so here.
• When done click on next to finish the user setup.
• You have now setup a new user and are ready to move onto the next step.

An alternate way of setting up a new user would be using Windows PowerShell:

• Open powershell with administrator access.
• Run the command New-LocalUser "Username", replacing username with the desired name such as PowerChurch or OfficeShares.
• When prompted for the password, enter the desired password for this user.
• You have now setup a new user and are ready to move onto the next step.

To share the PowerChurch folder, do the following:

• Open the File Explorer.
• Find Local Disk C under This PC and grouped under that, the "PowerChurch" folder. Note: Versions 8 and 8.5 weren't installed into a PowerChurch folder by default. They were installed directly to C:\PCPLUS8\ and C:\PCPLUS85\. Versions 9 and higher will all have a PowerChurch folder.
• Click the right mouse button on the PowerChurch folder and choose Properties.
• Select the Sharing tab and then click on the Share button.
• In the dropdown, select the user you created in the prior step.
• For Permission Level, choose "Read/Write".
• Click Share.
• If prompted to turn on network discovery and file sharing, be sure to select the Private network option.

Optionally adjust the following advanced sharing to prevent future problems:

• From the same properties window that is currently open, select the Advanced Sharing button.
• Click on the Caching button.
• Choose "no files or programs from the shared folder are available offline".
• Click Apply and Ok.

Additional Troubleshooting:

User account with the same name on the server and workstation:

• If you created a user account on the server that also exists on the workstation, prefix the
  username with the server name followed by a backslash:

  "<server>\<username>"

Duplicate SIDs:

• Windows update KB5065426 introduced Security Enhancements that broke various network related functionality such as file sharing utilized for PowerChurch among other things such as print sharing, map drives, RDP and more. 
• Most specifically, this affects users who are using a networked PowerChurch system with the same or duplicated machine SIDS. Ultimately, making them unable to connect to one another. 
• If you are unable to get connected using a valid user name and password you may have a duplicate SID. You will need a local PC technician to correct the problem. Correcting that problem is outside the scope of PowerChurch Support.

Users in this Microsoft help thread have suggested various fixes such as: Please read the article for yourself found here.

• Uninstalling the KB5065426 update to allows machines with the same machine SID to continue file sharing.
• Using 3rd party applications such as SIDCHG or others to manually change the SIDs of your machines so that they are no longer duplicated.
• Using Microsofts built in sysprep tool to strip the image of the SID so it is not duplicated when imaged on other computers.

You are now ready to move on to set up the workstation. Return to the Networking Instructions for PowerChurch Plus article and click the appropriate link for your workstation's Windows version.