Windows XP Users Unable to Connect to Samba Shares

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Level 1

10 points

Windows XP Users Unable to Connect to Samba Shares

I'm having trouble getting Windows XP clients to connect to the SMB shares. It only seems to be a Windows XP issue because Vista and OS X clients are able to connect/mount the shares just fine.

On XP, I go to a Windows Explorer window, go to Tools > Map Network Drive...
I enter in \\host.mydomain.net\sharename and hit "Finish"
It brings up the login dialogue window. I enter a valid username and password, then when I hit "OK" to mount the share, the login window pops immediately back up as if it didn't accept the login/pass (but no error message).

If I follow these same steps on Windows Vista, it authenticates and mounts the samba share perfectly. Same with OS X.

I've also tried enabling Guest Access and LAN Manager in SMB, but no luck.

Any ideas what could be causing this to happen on XP alone?

Mac OS X 10.5.4 on an Intel Xserve
SMB Role is set to Standalone Server

Posted on Jul 23, 2008 2:40 PM

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Answer 1

jadzea

Level 1

0 points

Jul 24, 2008 1:25 PM in response to maues

Is the server connected to a directory service (AD)? You could try prefixing the username with the netbios domain name (ie. ACCOUNTS\username instead of just username) and see if that helps.

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Answer 2

maues Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 25, 2008 9:05 AM in response to jadzea

Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to connect by adding the workgroup or netbios name to the login as you suggested.

The server is running its own OD services, but not connected to any external directory servers.

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Answer 3

maues Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 25, 2008 10:45 AM in response to maues

I don't know if this helps, but I found this a bit odd:

If I shut off the Samba service (on the 10.5 Server) and try to connect with XP, it still tries to authenticate, popping up with the login window, rather than saying "server cannot be found".

On Vista, it says "server cannot be found" like it should.

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Answer 4

maues Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 25, 2008 4:27 PM in response to maues

I figured out I was able to connect if I used the IP address instead of the hostname of the server:

\\132.12.123.12\sharename

Any reason why it won't accept the hostname, out of curiosity?

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Answer 5

Jul 29, 2008 8:49 AM in response to maues

sounds kinda like a DNS issue. may want to check your DNS servers and ping statistics

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Answer 6

Jul 29, 2008 9:38 AM in response to kennyatfinelight

I'm having the same issue.

I find that I can connect with the IP as well, but does not work with FQDN.

I've tried pinging the server and that works fine
All My macs work fine as well.

Any Ideas?

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Answer 7

davidh

Level 4

1,890 points

Jul 29, 2008 12:46 PM in response to Rodney W. East

This is probably a DNS issue.

I just setup Windows services for the first time on my 10.5(.4) server and was able to connect fine
via FQDN from my bench PC running Win XP. We have no AD environment here. I set the server to be the PDC, and enabled wins. Set the workgroup on the PC to match the "domain" of the server.

Does your server have a FQDN with verified forward and reverse lookup ?
Test via dig fqdn.ofserver.org (for example)
and
dig -x ip.address.ofserver

and

sudo changeip -checkhostname

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Answer 8

maues Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 31, 2008 12:50 AM in response to davidh

*sudo changeip -checkhostname* seems to be okay for me. I get: +The names match. There is nothing to change.+

The dig and *dig -x* queries seem to check out fine, too.

However, I'm still unable to connect from XP via host.domain.net, but it works fine on Vista. Server is in Standalone mode. Anything else I should check?

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