I have a desktop connected to the internet and to my home network through Wi-Fi, and a latptop connected to said desktop through an Ethernet cable. But Windows seems to only reach the laptop through Wi-Fi: I want to transfer files through the wired connection instead.

Setting up Internet Connectin Sharing and disconnecting the laptop from Wi-Fi altogether doesn't seem like the most elegant solution to me. I also thought about going to the hosts file and setting up the IP address manually, but that would make the laptop completely unavailable if it's not wired, which happens quite often unfortunately.

Is there any way for me to tell Windows to use the wired connection for a particular host if possible, and fallback to any other route it finds otherwise?