Samba Shares stopped working after recent Windows 10 update

mitu

Windows Education Edition has - by default - disabled guest browsing, this may be the issue here, though this isn't a recent change and I'm surprised you've been able to access \\retropie before any recent updates (or re-installation?).

Try using SFTP to access RetroPie with WinSCP, instead of file shares.

PhilboBaggins

@mitu I enabled guest browsing initially and got samba shares working (until recently). I have constant connection issues when using SFTP with WinSCP. It keeps trying to connect, and then only connects for 5-10 seconds before it disconnects and tries several times before reconnecting again for 5-10 seconds. This is the reason samba shares has been preferable to me. Is this an experience you've heard of with other users?

mitu

@philbobaggins said in Samba Shares stopped working after recent Windows 10 update:

Is this an experience you've heard of with other users?

Honestly, here in the forums at least, your issue seems more prevalent than any SSH/SFTP problems when used to tranfer roms.

gmsinger8808

@philbobaggins If you go into the RetroPie-Setup Script and access the Samba Share settings under Configuration / tools, then samba, if you click restart Samba Shares, do you get a message about samba.service not found? I'm having the same issue with Samba and I noticed that message. I am running 4.7.7 currently.

PhilboBaggins

@gmsinger8808 I tried restarting the Samba service and it looks like I'm getting the same error as you are.

@mitu Do you have any thoughts on what might have changed recently that would cause the service to not be found? I've never tried removing and re-installing Samba shares but do you think it would be worth giving it a try?

mitu

@philbobaggins said in Samba Shares stopped working after recent Windows 10 update:

I've never tried removing and re-installing Samba shares but do you think it would be worth giving it a try?

No, I don't think that will make a difference. The restart error is a bug in the config script, the service is not called samba anymore.
You can check that it's running with

systemctl status smbd
systemctl status nmbd

PhilboBaggins

@mitu I don't understand the entire output but it looks like Samba is running fine.

mitu

Yes, it works fine (as expected), the issue is on the Windows side.

EDIT: can you try installing wsdd and see if it changes anything on the Windows side ? It's a simple script which you can run from the command line to test if retropie is visible again on the network from Windows.

JenGun

@philbobaggins Please open the command prompt in Windows 10 and run:

net use r: \\retropie\roms

gmsinger8808

@mitu Could this have to do with the disabling of SMBV1? Would forcing SMB3 on the Pi help with Win 10 communication?

PhilboBaggins

@jengun said in Samba Shares stopped working after recent Windows 10 update:

net use r: \retropie\roms

Interesting. I thought enabling "Enable insecure guest logons" for my Lanman Workstation config would have allowed guest access. Apparently not (see below). I don't suppose you have a solution?

mitu

@gmsinger8808 said in Samba Shares stopped working after recent Windows 10 update:

@mitu Could this have to do with the disabling of SMBV1? Would forcing SMB3 on the Pi help with Win 10 communication?

No, it's not a matter of protocol. Both Linux (on the Pi) and Windows don't use SMB1 by default and Windows even disables it by default on new installations since Win 10.

JenGun

@philbobaggins

I thought enabling "Enable insecure guest logons" for my Lanman Workstation config would have allowed guest access. Apparently not (see below). I don't suppose you have a solution?

This registry value should work:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters] "AllowInsecureGuestAuth"=dword:1

PhilboBaggins

@jengun That did the trick! Thanks a lot for your help and insight. Hopefully this is a solution for others. FYI @gmsinger8808

Samba[FIXED].jpg

JenGun

@PhilboBaggins

@jengun That did the trick! Thanks a lot for your help and insight. Hopefully this is a solution for others. FYI @gmsinger8808

Glad it works because, to be honest, I don't have Windows 10: it remains a mystery to me that helpful error messages only appear on the command line and that updates sometimes overwrite settings. Why SSH doesn't work for you remains to be clarified (in another thread) ... :-)

TrisM

@PhilboBaggins - thanks for this, annoying Microsoft just disable features and then do not show any alert when attempting to use them. I also see you can edit this via Local Group Policy Editor (https://www.nodeum.io/howto/guest-access-in-smb2-disabled-by-default-in-windows-10)

Ashpool

@TrisM Though it is an old thread and I haven't asked/wondered aloud back over nearly 2 years ago, was considering it to be just a SEP. But as you ~~revoked~~ revived the thread I am doing it now, because now I am really puzzled/curious and doubting again: I have Windows 10 Pro on 2 desktop + 1 laptop machines since the EOL of Window 7 and a third desktop setup in 2020. None of them had this behaviour and on all four (3 on 22H2, my laptop still on 21H2) this Group Policy is still defaulting to "Not configured" [edit: besides Mitus remark in the early posts that it is disabled as default on some mints of win10 and that's not including home/pro] . And as Win10 is using "Language Packs" (as it was on xp x64) instead of regional versions of the os itself, I somehow doubt that updates are meddling with those settings differently for different regions and I am still unsure why this was changed on some user systems and whether it truly was done by the M$ Update or by other means and if yes under what circumstances this would have happened.