Kodi Community Forum

So I've been a XBMC/Kodi user for god knows how long now. For the better part of a decade I've been using a gaming rig (windows 7) I built in '09 as a dual purpose media center for Kodi. I've never had an issue with sharing files to various devices in my home that couldn't be overcome, the one currently used the most is a laptop with windows 7 but I did try out windows 10 on it before and I had no issues with it then either. I reverted that back to windows 7 because I really just prefer it. Android phones, a tablet, they all work flawlessly too.

I recently built a new high end gaming rig and of course put windows 10 on it for directx 12 support. It works blazingly fast, and it's hooked up to the network through an old WRT610N router using DD-WRT as an ethernet bridge to my main router. I should note that this is what the media server (the windows 7 rig with all my media/hard drives) was hooked up to previously and had no problems with sharing. I put the old media server rig near the router wired directly into it, and while I was at everything did a completely clean install of Windows 7 to that machine since I added an SSD to it.

I can still access the SMB shares hosted on that media server with my windows 7 laptop, android phones, and tablet via Kodi. I however, for the life of me, cannot get the new Windows 10 Desktop which will be my primary means of watching it since it has a gorgeous 1440p monitor, to see or access any SMB shares. When I go into the add sources, it never shows any other machines, not my desktop media server, or my laptop which it should also be showing. I also can't manually add the network location, it tells me it's not available.

I can, however, access all those files from windows explorer, copy, transfer, everything. My computer itself has no issues accessing them or communicating with that machine, and it's all quite fast since that ethernet bridge gets 60Mbps over the LAN. I keep seeing about Ipv6, it is enabled and has been, though disabled it to see, same thing. Oh, plex works fine too, but I really, really, really, really don't want to give up on Kodi. Call me old fashioned, but there's nothing out there better and likely never will be.

I've looked up numerous solutions on these forums, tried them, none have worked. I've tried numerous versions of Kodi, mostly Isengard and the Jarvis RC's, but today also the final version of Jarvis and none have worked. I tried clean installs of BOTH PC's now as well. I tried editing the files, registry hacks, all of it. I've tried every configuration I can think of, with a microsoft account (now currently am without because I really loathe having that on my PC). No matter what, my new desktop cannot access, or for that matter even see, the Windows 7 SMB shares via Kodi alone.

Please help?

All your Windows PCs need to be in the same Workgroup. In my sig go to the SMB wiki and refer to the further reading section on joining a homegroup.

Try manually add source by network location / smb / ip / user / password. Mine has Win10 as files server and sometimes has to add source manually because browse network from Kodi can't find server.

Thanks for the responses.

All the computers are and always have been in the same workgroup. I've taken them out of the homegroups, created new ones, and then left and did it all without homegroups all together, to no avail for the one machine. That wiki page was very helpful in the past with enabling new shares however.

I've also tried adding them manually in that way. Can access them all via explorer using the ip/location.

It's quite perplexing, and probably am just going to give up and give in and pay the 4.99 to join the plex bandwagon by buying the app for windows.

If you can access them via explorer, just map network drive and use Kodi access through drive letter. It will works.

I tried PLEX many times, but still came back to KODI everytime.

this is a Win10 Problem, which exists since the last Update (November Release). There will be a FIX for it in the march Update from Microsoft.
on certain forum you might find a manual way, to get it fixed.

(2016-02-21, 12:07)A-Swiss Wrote: [ -> ]this is a Win10 Problem, which exists since the last Update (November Release). There will be a FIX for it in the march Update from Microsoft.
on certain forum you might find a manual way, to get it fixed.

?? My Win 10 machine is up to date and I've had no issues with SMB shares. I had a problem with SMB access initially when I first installed Win 10 on my server which was solved by enabling the guest account as my SMB share access defaulted to that route. Unlike Win7, the Guest account is off in Win 10 by default.

My windows 10 SMB share problem occurs only when access with other OS (iOS / Android / Linux). Never had problem when it's Windows - Windows though.

You could take the easy way out and map the drives in windows

(2016-02-22, 05:23)Derek Wrote: [ -> ]You could take the easy way out and map the drives in windows

bingo!

(2016-02-21, 12:07)A-Swiss Wrote: [ -> ]this is a Win10 Problem, which exists since the last Update (November Release). There will be a FIX for it in the march Update from Microsoft.
on certain forum you might find a manual way, to get it fixed.

It works fine now if its configured correctly believe me or not, it always has apart from the apple disaster which was easily fixed with some smb.conf fiddling

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. I did end up just mapping them and taking the easy way out. Works well enough I suppose but bugs me to not get to the root of a problem!

Because it maps via windows it shows its fixable with knowlege and time but most people dont bother so long as it works