Windows 7 and problem with samba shares

Good evening,


I've been trying for a week to get a Windows 7 Home Premium equipped laptop to be able to access samba shares on my home network.

The network is setup as follows:

1) "master" modem/router connected to Internet (192.168.1.1)
2) "slave" router connected to master router (192.168.2.1)
3) NAS physically connected to slave router via Gigabit LAN / static IP address 192.168.2.2
4) Laptop n°1 running WXP (192.168.2.10) and Laptop n°2 running W7 (192.168.2.7) connected to slave router via WLAN and DHCP using "reserved IP address by MAC address" feature of the router (802.11g with WPA/WPA2)


The problem is that the Windows 7 machine won't see either of the NAS or WXP machine shares.

The WXP machine can see and access the W7 machine shares.


The W7 machine is setup as follows:

- windows firewall OFF
- network connection configured as a Home/Work network, HomeGroup feature not used
- no domain, workgroup named WORKGROUP, same as WXP and NAS.
- in advanced network settings, file and printer sharing enabled, network discovery enabled, public folders enabled
- Server service running.

In the File Explorer in the Network folder the W7 machine sees itself as well as DLNA/UPnP devices (Twonky Media Server running on NAS, the NAS itself (but not it's shares), the slave router), but no SMB shares.

The NAS user accounts is configured with a user account using the same credentials as the W7 administrator account.

Using the NAS finder program (QNAP finder) sees the NAS on the network but cannot map a drive or see the shares. Error message saying that the server cannot be found on the network. Trying to map a share as a drive in File Explorer doesn't work, even when using NAS IP address or name.

However, access to NAS' web interface works OK by HTTP...


After having tried to find a solution on QNAP's forums, I'm now turning to you hoping that you can help me out ;-)

Thanks in advance.

flyingflatfour said:

Good evening,


I've been trying for a week to get a Windows 7 Home Premium equipped laptop to be able to access samba shares on my home network.

The network is setup as follows:

1) "master" modem/router connected to Internet (192.168.1.1)
2) "slave" router connected to master router (192.168.2.1)
3) NAS physically connected to slave router via Gigabit LAN / static IP address 192.168.2.2
4) Laptop n°1 running WXP (192.168.2.10) and Laptop n°2 running W7 (192.168.2.7) connected to slave router via WLAN and DHCP using "reserved IP address by MAC address" feature of the router (802.11g with WPA/WPA2)


The problem is that the Windows 7 machine won't see either of the NAS or WXP machine shares.

The WXP machine can see and access the W7 machine shares.


The W7 machine is setup as follows:

- windows firewall OFF
- network connection configured as a Home/Work network, HomeGroup feature not used
- no domain, workgroup named WORKGROUP, same as WXP ans NAS.
- in advanced network settings, file and printer sharing enabled, network discovery enabled, public folders enabled
- Server service running.

In the File Explorer in the Network folder the W7 machine sees itself as well as DLNA/UPnP devices (Twonky Media Server running on NAS, the NAS itself (but not it's shares), the slave router), but no SMB shares.

The NAS user accounts is configured with a user account using the same credentials as the W7 administrator account.

Using the NAS finder program (QNAP finder) sees the NAS on the network but cannot map a drive or see the shares. Error message saying that the server cannot be found on the network. Trying to map a share as a drive in File Explorer doesn't work, even when using NAS IP address or name.

However, access to NAS' web interface works OK by HTTP...


After having tried to find a solution on QNAP's forums, I'm now turning to you hoping that you can help me out ;-)

Thanks in advance.

For Home Premium you don't have the local security policy in order to adjust the LM and NTLM authentication levels so you will need to do that in the registry.

If the key doesn't exist you need to create it. Back up the registry first just in case.

There needs to be a DWORD named LmCompatibilityLevel set to value of 2 " at
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa

So open regedit and navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa then choose to create DWORD named LmCompatibilityLevel then set the value to 2 although value 1 may work.

Also according to the Samba site you may need to make another adjustment. I'm not entirely sure if this pertains to Windows 7 Home Premium or not.

Windows 7 Registry settings
There are currently two registry settings required to be added on the Windows 7 client prior to joining a Samba Domain. These are:
HKLM\System\CCS\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters DWORD DomainCompatibilityMode = 1 DWORD DNSNameResolutionRequired = 0More about the Samba share and there is an update. http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Windows7

This link explains what the different values do.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc960646.aspx

One of the LM values should allow you to connect to those Samba shares and this is about all I can find on this.

From what I understand Samba is a freeware SMB server, and that's what QNAP is running in their firmware.

Apparently only poeple who can see the shares but have sluggish file explorer behaviours do those registry hacks...

BTW, it doesn't explain why I cannot see the native WXP SMB shares whereas the WXP can see and access the W7 SMB shares?

I'll try them nevertheless, and perhaps look into NOD32 see if it's blocking anything?

Thanks again,


André