This step-by-step guide shows how to set up FTP server on Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 without installing any third-party software or tools
- Open the ‘Control Panel‘ and click on ‘Programs and Features’-Click on ‘Turn Windows features on or off”.
- Look for ‘Internet Information Services‘ and activate the check boxes ‘FTP Extensibility‘ and ‘FTP Service‘ and WWW services and press ‘OK‘.
- Go back to the ‘Control panel‘ and click on ‘Administrative tools‘. Double-click ‘Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager‘.
- In the freshly opened windows make a left-click on ‘Sites‘, follow by and right-click. Then choose ‘Add FTP Site…‘.Add a name for your FTP server like ‘My FTP‘ and select a physical path for your server. This will be the default directory to access your FTP server.For a common FTP server choose the folder E:\FTP server. Click ‘Next‘.
- In the next step select your Window PC’s FIXED IP address (Look for your IP address in your router setting. Fix the IP address there). Choose ‘No SSL‘ (If you do have an SSL certificate, you can choose either ‘Require SSL‘ or ‘Allow SSL‘.) and press ‘Next‘. Note: For security reasons be aware to require SSL, if you intend to make this FTP server accessible via the Internet!
- Choose ‘Authentication Basic’ (require’s that the FTP users specify a login ID and password). For a common FTP server create a local user account and give it permission on the FTP content directory. If you prefer to use an already existing local computer user account instead of creating a new one, you can skip this step and you can directly assign permissions to the folder:
- For your private cloud (access to your local files) select ‘Allow access to‘: ’All users‘ for general access of all users of your PC or ’specified users‘ for dedicated users, select ‘Read‘ and ‘Write‘. Click on ‘Finish‘.
- Now your ‘My FTP’ built-in Windows 8 / 8.1 FTP server is set up. Click on ‘Start‘ to get it running. Note: If another FTP server is already running you first have to stop it and then start ‘My FTP‘ FTP server.
- If after starting FTP service it does not work then check following
- Check firewall. Disable it if you care less about security or allow FTP server in exceptions.
- Check FTP-Authorization rules in Windows 8 / Windows 8.1
- Check FTP-Authentication in Windows 8 / Windows 8.1