Copying to Network Drive Error code -36

THIS IS MY SOLUTION FOR ERROR CODE 36 CONNECTING TO SMB SHARES ON WINDOWS SYSTEMS

I had the same problem and kept beating my head. After reading numerous posts with fix issues using dot_clean and many others this is what I found that works for me. I have multiple Network Drive Shares on 2 Windows 7 computers and connect via smb. I was able to transfer files via the Terminal using the cp command, but the solution below allowed me to transfer via Finder again without having to use the terminal anymore.

I was sharing the entire drive (ex: E:\) and was going over permissions and everything looked fine. The user I was connecting as had Full Control permissions. Then I realized maybe I should look at who the Owner of drive was under Properties > Security > Advanced > Owner: System was the Owner. I then clicked the Change Permissions Tab and changed the Owner to my user name on the system. Poof every thing was worked again.

So my steps were:

1. Right Click the Drive Share
2. Select Properties
3. Select Security Tab
4. Choose Advanced
5. Select Owner Tab
6. Change the Current Owner from System to Your "User Account" (ex: John Doe)
7. Check Replace Owner on Subcontainers and Objects
8. Click Apply then Ok on each of the boxes till all are closed.
9. Try to reconnect to the share and transfer files

Hi Dan

You may have an issue with finder
see this
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2207

Here's the solution (an anomaly???). Under 10.5, when I connected to my XP computer, I could read / write files in the folders without having to have set permissions on the folder(s). Perhaps this was a bug in 10.5?

I went into my folders on the XP computer, and changed the sharing permissions to read and write. That solved my problem for Word, Excel and Text Edit. It also got rid of the error 36 code when copying files.

A call in to Apple support and problem solved!

1) Repair the permissions on your hard drive in Disk Utility.
2) Reboot

That's it. We have no more Error Code -36 on our Windows shares. This worked on both of our Snow Leopard Macs.

Apples_Rulez suggestion regarding changing my status on the Security Tab of the Windows Server from "modify" to "full" worked - partially. I am now able to copy files from my machine onto the server without throwing the Error -36. But, when I open and modify a file on the File Server with MS Word, and then try to save it, I get an error from Word saying "the disk may be full or write protected..." I do not get this error if I do this with Pages. The Security status change and the Word problem may be two different issues.

Let's make it a bit weirder....
I had the same problem, the error -36, when trying to copy a file / folder to my SMB drive.
I changed the security settings for this share to full access, saved, waited a bit until the operation was finished. Then I unmounted this share and mounted it again.
I tried to copy and it worked well, no more errors anymore.
I rebooted my machine, and tried packages, zips, large files, small files, everything seems to be fine.
But I am not happy with the full access settings.
So I reverted this setting, saved this, waited a bit until the operation was finished, remounted the share....
And it still works....
I tried that with other shares from different servers, windows 2003, xp and my netapp shares and the problem seems to be solved.
A miracle? I don't know...
I guess I have to be pragmatic and be happy that it works now. I do not need to understand everything...
regards

Oliver

I have been having all the same problems you all have had with this error -36 when copying to an SMB drive (actually a Microsoft SBS 2003).

After following these discussions for a while I have now tested changing the permissions on the drives to "full control" and this has fixed my issues when copying to these drives - for all file types.

While I agree with one of the other posters here that some network admins may not actually agree to giving people "full control" for us in our company it was the only way around the issue until an Apple solution is released.

(now if I could just fix my supposedly bad battery that was fine before the 10.6.1 upgrade!)

Hi all

Regarding SMB shares.
Apple have completed their trouble shooting and have replicated the issue.
They have found that this is an issue with Snow Leopard and its communication with Windows type shares ie FAT32.
They recommended that I reformat my external HD to HFS+ which is the Mac Journaled format and communication will work.
So basically if you want a windows machine and a mac to communicate with the External HD we're stuffed.
They have added the issue to items that will need to be addressed in the next update of snow leopard but could not say when that will be.

The only relatively easy work around that I have found to work is to use fetch and move the files to and from the external drive in that way - which works every time.

Regards
Stuart

I am having this issue as well. I am trying to copy a file to a Windows Server using smb. With finder copying a single file I get an error -36, for a folder I get an error -1427 (unexpected error occurred). If I use cp I get could not copy extended attributes to ...:Invalid argument. This even happens for files that do not have extended attributes (some didn't have them and I removed them from others using xattr). If I try to cp a folder, it even has an issue copying the .DS_Store file, along with the rest of the files. I can copy the files if I use cp -X or Final Cut Server. I tried the manual install of 10.6.2 Combo and I could copy again. I tried installing it on a second computer, but I still had the copy issue. I rebooted the computer that the 10.6.2 Combo installer fixed and I had the problem again. I first noticed this with 10.6.2. I re-installed 10.5.5 and upgraded to 10.5.8 and both work perfectly. I then upgraded to 10.6, 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 all of which had this issue.

I have seen a possible fix (for some situations) to delete all the .DSStore hidden files that Leopard had put on the NAS device. Then prevent any of those .DSStore files from writing to the NAS drive by using the freeware TinkerTool to stop those files ever being written by OS X. Some users have said this drastically speeds up SMB sharing.

This from Apple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4017

My NAS, a Synology Diskstation exhibited the -36 problem a while back but was fixed by a firmware update from Synology and I no longer have problems copying folders, files or bundles.

Given that I suspect the SMB problem - I meant to add, that applies to making the connection, not the copying.

I just did some more testing, and easily, the cp command at the command line, trumps the Finder.

Also, removing the .DS_Store file of the destination directory, again improves the odds ... and this relates to my previous post, about the "Cannot allocate memory" error. If the .DS_Store file is removed from the destination directory on the Mac, then a follow up cp command, copying a file from the "PC" to the destination directory, succeeds.

So, there's a lot to be said for those who have observed that the Finder, whether Mac OS 10.4.11, 10.5.8, 10.6.2, fails when trying to do its dot directorystorage chores.

looks like Apple are about to fix this problem:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/18/releaseof_apples_mac_os_x_10_6_3_update_appearsimminent.html

Highlight: Other fixes baked into the release target issues with mail messages displaying the incorrect background color and problems copying files to a shared Windows volume.

About friggin time!

PathFinder and Terminal cp don't seem to have this problem so, per my post in the Finder and Dock forum, I'm not convinced that this is a fundamental networking problem. It's a shame to have to install a 3rd party application to fix something that should be working in the OS (which is not to say that PathFinder isn't good in it's own right).

We have some users having the same problem.

What is the size of your remote network share?

I saw a posting somewhere (I'm sorry, I can't find it now) that suggested the size of the remote drive might be the issue. Drives under 2 terabytes work, drives over 2TB don't. We have one user (10.6) who has verified that he can write to all network shares except those which are larger than 2TB.

Windows Server 2008, Windows Active Directory domain, etc. CP works from the Terminal, but Office applications and many Finder operations fail with the same read-only errors everyone else is reporting.