Network Path Was Not Found (Windows 8 and 7)

[eldude_123]

Hi guys,

Sorry in advance if this is a stupid question but it has seriously been doing my head in!

I'm running 9.1.0.1 - Sandstorm (revision 847). Everything seems to be running fine with the exception of my CIFS/SMB share with my Windows laptop.
When I was running Windows 8 I was getting really intermittent connectivity with my NASIFS/SMB. Sometimes it would show up under my Network, sometimes not at all and sometimes it would show up but I would get a 'network path was not found' error when I would try to go into it. Weirdly when I switched back to Windows 7 it was working fine again - until today when it will just not show up at all and my old desktop shortcut now gives the network path error. The weird thing is I can see the NAS as a mediaserver so I know it is definately working and it's not that the NAS itself is not being on the network. I can also ping the NAS from my laptop and the laptop from my NAS and if I connect via SFTP on an android device I can browse all the files on the NAS so the issue is definately to do with CIFS/SMB.

I have local user authentication and Max Protocol SMB2. I want to keep the Local User authentication rather than annonymous login because I access the NAS over the internet on multiple android and IOS devices and from looking at the logs multiple people from around the globe try to hack into it everyday via SSH so I don't want to risk opening up a way for them to get in. Apologies if that isn't quite right, it's been a few months since I did the initial setup of my NAS and can't remember all the specifics - I understand that CIFS/ SMB is different from accessing via SSH/SFTP but my point is that I don't want to create a security hole because I know that the hackers have thus far failed to get in.

On the system log it says:
Samba name server XXXXXX is now a local master browser for workgroup XXXXXX on subnet 192.168.xxx.xxx - the same as when the CIFS/SMB sharing was working previously.

Once again apologies if I've said anything stupid, I just want to get this working consistently as I've spent a lot of time, £ and effort on getting my NAS up and running. (it's become a bit of an obsession!) It's not the end of the world if it doesn't work but it annoys me that it was working perfectly until today and then something else has gone wrong.

If anyone can help I would be massively grateful!

Thanks

eldude

[kenZ71]

I use ES File Explorer to browse my NAS from my Android phone - which uses the SMB / CIFS shares to view data. This helps me verify if my flaky Windows Laptop is haveing issues or my NAS is the bad guy. Its always Windows!!

Try checking your Windows firewall and networking settings - I bet they are blocking connections to other network nodes.

[eldude_123]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for your reply! I had actually submitted a quick reply but for some reason it hasn't shown up in the topic - I swear technology has something against me today!

When I was talking about accessing the NAS on android via SFTP I was meaning via ES File Explorer. It's a brilliant wee app and I really wish there was a Windows equivalent, it would make life so much easier. As far as I understood about it, ES File Explorer uses SFTP not CIFS/SMB, is this not the case?

Tried turning off Windows Firewall but no joy.

I noticed today that it's not just the NAS that's disappeared from the network, my XBMC (raspberry pi that I use to access the NAS via the TV) has also gone. This would lead me to think something has changed on my network that now neither are visible but I cannot for the life of me think what - I have not changed anything.

Has anyone here experienced anything similar and if so did you manage to fix it?
It's all well and good being able to access my NAS via ES File EXplorer but it doesn't do me much good when wanting to transfer large files - the wireless transfer to my tablet is so slow compared with a wired CIFS/SMB connection to my laptop and I then have to physically transfer files from my tablet to the laptop. Plus theres a size limit as my tablet only has ~ 10gb free space on it.

I would be so grateful if someone could point me in the right direction with this - I'm completely out of ideas.

Many thanks in advance.

eldude

[kenZ71]

Your probably right that ES File Explorer is using SFTP, silly me what was I thinking ?

I recently had weird network issues, turns out my ISP was trying to help me by pushing updates to their router which caused my settings to vanish. I was quite annoyed. Perhaps you have a similar issue ? Take a look at your network setup on the router.

[eldude_123]

Haha Ken, I hope you didn't take what I said in the wrong way - I'm very likely to be wrong about these sort of things! The only reason I thought that was because I had to configure for SFTP rather than FTP to get ES File Explorer to work properly.

I'm at a complete loss - I have tried pretty much everything I can think of! I'm going to hard reset the router now but if that doesn't work (which to be honest I can't see why solely because I have looked at every single setting on the router after you saying about your ISP messing with your settings and couldn't identify any issues) I'm going to yet again reinstall windows. I can't keep doing that every fortnight!

I love Nas4Free and my Nas setup is the best thing i've ever built, it just frustrates me sometimes because you don't change a thing and end up losing core functionality for no reason.

Thanks for your suggestions.

All the best,

eldude

[kenZ71]

No worry, takes a lot to bug me. Especially from an internet forum. Its all good!

When your Windows machine can't see the NAS drives are you able to get to the NAS Web Gui screen from the same lapop? If yes, do you still have trouble after verifying the NAS is alive ?

Would it help if you mapped a drive to the NAS passing in the user name & password from a batch script? Something like this: net use * \\servername\share /user:domain\username * /persistent:no

[eldude_123]

Hi Ken,

Thought I would message you with an update. I had previously been using a 'borrowed' copy of windows. Not sure if the issue was related to that but I had wanted to get a legit copy for a while so I did - now it all seems to be working ok. It's one of those weird situations whereby it's difficult to tell if it was Windows or the NAS at fault. It's been running since Monday and seems to be working ok so fingers crossed I don't have to reinstall this version. Weirdly enough I have noticed a significant drop in CIFS/SMB performance when switching from Windows 7 - 8 or 8.1. Really wouldn't have expected that as I would assume a new version of an OS would improve not break but hey I guess kinks have to be worked out. Now running Windows 7 again and I'm happy.

Anyway just wanted to thank you for taking the time to help me out.

All the best,

eldude