SMB Issue

[virtuo]

A mate of mine came to me with what I thought was a simple networking problem - spent 3 hours yesterday trawling google and messing around and got nowhere, so thought I'd give you all a nice little challenge.

Situation: Guy runs Windows 10 Pro, latest updates as far as I can tell. His work/hobby is 3D animation/simulation - his home setup he renders all sorts of wacky stuff to x265 files to a folder he shares on his network (wired) (using Windows SMB). He picks these up on his Kodi box in the living room to view his creations.

So, this has worked fine for "ages", I've seen it working before. But Kodi (Android) has started failing to find the shared drive. I only had my phone with me, but that couldn't find the shares either. He's adamant he hasn't changed anything (which I believe - the router hasn't been logged in to for months, the user accounts and shared paths on windows haven't changed and the smb settings on the streamer box also havent changed since the day it was put in, over a year ago ).

On the host machine, I can go to Windows explorer and navigate to \\BOBBYS-PC and see all the shares, on the android streamer I just get a "connection timeout" error (or occasionally a connection refused).

There is an account created specifically to access the share, but the same happens using his Administrator username.

I've tried the following
Restarting EVERYTHING (router, PC, Android box)
Assigned static IPS to box and PC
Enabled all three versions of SMB protocol in Windows features
Tried accessing by machine name, IP address (with and without 445 port suffix)
Checked the windows event logs - nothing standing out as odd.

I'm going back tonight with my laptop to try and diagnose further (maybe a windows client can connect to the windows host), is there anything I should be trying out?



Thanks in advance..!

[peterb]

Which version of SMB is running on Windows? Android will be using SAMBA - the open source implementation of the SMB protocol. So check both are running the same versions.

If there has been an update to SMB its possible that might have broken the link. I have only ever used it cross platform in reverse using the SAMBA SMB/NMB suite on a linux server with mixed Win/OSX/Linux clients.

[Jonj1611]

Have you tried turning it off and on

I hate these kind of problems, nothing worse than "nothing's changed"

[virtuo]

As I understand it, the android boxes use SMB1.0, I think Win10 disabled v1 and v2 by default, but they can be enabled in the "Windows Features" screen (which has been done). From what I could see, all 3 were enabled at once (seems legitimately possible) and I presume windows just auto negotiates the protocol version with the client.

Might try disabling the newer versions and forcing it to only use 1.0, least it's a start

[virtuo]

Still no luck, SMB1 and SMB 2/3 are things in Win 10, tried enabling and disabling them in various arrangements in Powershell.. nothing.

Found some registry hacks that didn't work either

Made sure NETBIOS was enabled of TCP/IP

Checked firewall rules again

No Windows updates prior to it going weird

Saw that KODI 17.x has an SMB issue on Android, but again it was working fine and hasn't been updated to cause the error

Using ES File explorer on android on the same network can't connect either

Windows 10 laptop can see the shares no problem


Need a drink..

[SUMMONER]

Try using System Restore (type Recovery in the start menu search) to go back to a point when it was working.

[Unique]

this sounds like an issue i had. i tried the registry tricks and reenabling the disabled versions of smb, but that never worked. in the end i resolved it (although it could have been a combitation of all the other things plus the final move), but making new shares on the android kodi, but i used to have the share as "workgroup/pcname/drivename" working fine, but the new ones are just "pcname/drivename"

so try deleting the links on kodi and just making new ones

[virtuo]

Hi guys, an update

Tried system restore, but it only had one restore point - after the problems started. Great.

The shares were not visible from Kodi, random iOS file managers and 2 other Android phones - my Win 10 laptop could see the shares, if I typed the paths in directly, but it couldn't "see" the PC on the network.

I shared a folder on my Win10 laptop, and the Droids all picked that up right away.

So I just went and switched all the adapter services and settings on to match what was on my laptop - factory fresh settings. Restarted everything again and can now access the shares, by IP only, from the droid box. It still doesn't discover the PC on the network though

Somethings still not right, but at least it sort of works now. Thanks for the tips, things like this make me remember why I'm not in IT support

[peterb]

Iirc the discovery is via netbios. The *nix use a service called numb (when acting as an SMB server) to provide netbios services, so check the netbios service on the windows machine.

[virtuo]

Iirc the discovery is via netbios. The *nix use a service called numb (when acting as an SMB server) to provide netbios services, so check the netbios service on the windows machine.

Tried that in my second round of troubleshooting, it wasn't disabled/stopped either. Annoying thing is I don't want to trust Windows telling me it's working, because it doesn't look like it is.

If I get dragged back to "fix" it again, I'm certainly going to spend my time kicking that hornets nest. For how much I actually like Windows 10, I don't like them constantly burying/hiding settings

[shaithis]

I you tried a DNS updater for Android? Some versions will ignore the settings it gets from DHCP.