[kamby19]

I've set aside one of my home-built Windows 7 desktop computers for hosting about 12-15 TB of movies and TV shows and general media that I very frequently watch/listen with my two full Fire TV gen 2's (not sticks) via wired Ethernet. I share the five separate drive's media folders via simple Windows sharing (i.e., SMB).

Yesterday (20-Jan-2019), I made a backup clone of my system partition (and ensured that this didn't produce a partition ID collision). Naturally, I continued to use the original system disk/partition. But when I rebooted afterwards, neither of my Fire TVs could connect to any of those shares! Now, this has happened many times over the years, but really only when I copy folders/files from one of my other computers to the server over the local LAN. And every single time this has happened, the 100% absolutely certain fix was to simply reboot the host machine.  That has always worked.

But not anymore !

I've rebooted the host machine about 10 times, and restarted both Fire TVs several times, and I can connect to all the media drives and media files perfectly from all my other Windows computers on my LAN.  I've also rebooted the router a couple of times.  But without changing anything, neither of my Fire TVs will connect. Not only won't they connect to the usual host machine, they won't connect to any of my other four Windows machines either.

If I had changed anything at all, naturally I would start looking there. But I have changed nothing at all.  And I've used the recommended procedure to block Amazon from updating my Fire TVs, so nothing should have changed there -- unless anyone knows if Amazon tried to push an update in the last few days?

So I'm utterly and totally stuck! What should I do now?

[kamby19]

Same problem with Kodi 17.6 (which is much worse than 16.1 anyway).

[jools5000]

Have you installed this update? (earlier January update broke SMB sharing in Windows 7 in some scenarios)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help...er-2008-r2

[kamby19]

Have you installed this update? (earlier January update broke SMB sharing in Windows 7 in some scenarios)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help...er-2008-r2

 Hey, thanks, jools5000 ! That's the kind of great, knowledgeable help I was hoping for!

Unfortunately, that didn't help. I installed that update on the primary Win 7 host machine and rebooted, but still neither FTV was able to connect. Then I checked to see if I had installed the problematic Jan 8 update, and learned that it wasn't there anyway. Oh, well -- but I'm extremely DESPERATE to solve this issue!

One thing that might possibly be a clue is that if I try to edit an existing source or create a new one, once I select SMB, I do NOT see my workgroup there. In the past, if I didn't see my workgroup name there, it meant that it was either going to be difficult or impossible to add or edit a source.  But I tried browsing for a source manually by first entering my username and password, then the server host name and shared folder, which has usually worked in the past when the workgroup name didn't appear -- but it still doesn't work, from either of my FTVs or to any of my other Win 7 machines.

What can I do next? Is there somewhere else where I could possibly get the attention of other experts such as yourself?

Thanks again!

[Klojum]

If your SMB server is now version 2, network discovery will no longer work. You will need to try/use Kodi's "Add a network location..." and fill in all the full credentials manually.

[kamby19]

Thanks, Klojum !  I appreciate your reply.

But since I haven't changed anything on either the Fire TVs or the Win 7 computers, I can't imagine how there could have been a change of that nature, unless Amazon pushed through some update very recently that would have done that. Do you know of such?

Also, I've tried repeatedly to start from scratch and connect via host name, share name, username and password, but nothing is ever found that way, either.  I should add that when I try to add a new source or edit an existing one by beginning not from scratch but rather from SMB, I never see my workgroup name (though I've reset it and then changed it to the correct value several times). In the past, whenever I didn't see my workgroup name there, I knew I was in for difficulties in connecting to any SMB share (although the username/password approach always worked in that case).

  I'm totally exasperated and utterly at a loss!

[Klojum]

Are you sure you haven't gotten any updates on your Windows 7 machine in the last couple of days?

[tonhuelos]

This has never worked on Kodi 18 for android (Been testing Kodi 18 since before first beta). Saw this thread last night and decided to test the facts. Installed Kodi 16 on my Android box, worked fine, Installed Kodi 17 on my android box, worked fine, Installed Kodi 18, does not work. Should be noted I also run Kodi 18 on a laptop and it also connects no problem. The browse function needs to work to make this a useful feature, other than that revert to an older version of Kodi is the only viable solution I've found.

[Klojum]

The browse function needs to work to make this a useful feature

You can thank Microsoft for removing that feature, or you could reinstate SMBv1 all over your network along with its possible security backlash. It's your choice.

[tonhuelos]

The Android Kodi 18 solution is: Settings > Services > SMB > turn it from V3 to V1. This requires a restart and will say so. Once you restart Kodi Browse will work again.

[jools5000]

The browse function needs to work to make this a useful feature

You can thank Microsoft for removing that feature, or you could reinstate SMBv1 all over your network along with its possible security backlash. It's your choice.  

Problem is Windows users dont see any disadvantage from this as NetBIOS is only one method of name resolution/discovery and it has been on its way out for years.  Since Vista Windows uses now uses LLMNR and/or WSD to discover other PC's  and other devices.

I have found this, maybe a candidate for a feature request?
https://github.com/christgau/wsdd

[kamby19]

Are you sure you haven't gotten any updates on your Windows 7 machine in the last couple of days?

 Well, since it can be tricky to determine which updates have been installed from the usual display, I created a text file listing them all, and then searched that.  Here are the updates installed during Jan 2019:

    KB4480063
    KB4487345
    KB4480970

Bingo! That last one was reported here, for instance: Patch Tuesday updates for Win7, KB 4480970 and KB 4480960 knock out networking

I assume one or both of them are what you were referring to in your post # 3?  I tried to learn from the page you linked which updates created the problem, but I must have failed, which is why i replied as I did (sorry). Know anything relevant about the other two?

Anyway, your post got me excited again, so I uninstalled KB4480970 & rebooted (Windows Update wanted to re-install it soon thereafter, but I've hidden it now).

Sadly, it made no difference.  I still get "Connection timed out" followed by "Couldn't connect to network server".

There was one improvement however: When I try to "Add videos..." and start with SMB, I now see the correct workgroup name again! This seemed to be great news, but after that I still get "Connection timed out".

Any other suggestions, please?

[Klojum]

Any other suggestions, please?

I'm a Linux guy, so I would say go with NFS instead of SMB. NFS can be done on Windows, but it does have its own challenges. There are two or three threads on the Kodi forum on how to run a NFS server on a Windows machine. Or, get yourself an old computer, install Ubuntu (Server) on it, and install NFS server. Once you know how, it can be done in 15 minutes from start to finish. It should make a nice weekend learning project.

[kamby19]

Hey, thanks very much, Klojum!  I'm sorry and embarrassed about how very tardy this reply is, but while trying to get it to work, I forgot to return to praise your advice.

I searched for and found an excellent open source NFS server package named WinNFSd .

But many of the various usage guides were contradictory (or so it appeared to me), until I found a perfect one. I wish I could recall the author or where I found it, but it solved my failed, clumsy attempts with a simple example config file using aliases.

First, I created a startup batch file with a single line of text:

winnfsd.exe -id 0 0 -log off -pathFile "C:\WinNFSd\exports"

The contents of the (extensionless) file "exports" are as follows (the drive letters and paths are relative to the server host machine):

H:\Folder1_RiffTrax > /Riff1
K:\Folder2\Music > /Music2

Note that it's crucial that the first line remain blank (even though it doesn't look like it due to the Quote block)!

Then, in Kodi, select the NFS protocol to add those sources as follows:

nfs://192.168.xxx.yyy/Riff1/
nfs://192.168.xxx.yyy/Music2/

Restart or manually launch the batch file, and you're in business! Hooray!

Not only does NFS solve the connection problems I was having with SMB, there's a great additional benefit. You see, often transferring data via SMB in Windows outside of Kodi (whether Kodi was running or not), afterwards Kodi wouldn't be able to connect to SMB shares until I rebooted the server host machine. That was extremely annoying! But now that I'm using NFS, that has never happened again!

So thanks once more, wise Klojum, for your great advice!


(BTW, is your handle a homage to the old man from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?  Nice!)

[axbmcuser]

For what it's worth:

Had the same problem. Windows 7 shares suddenly stopped working when being accessed from Andrdoid KODI 17 after the Windows 7 machine installed some updates. (Accessing the shares from Linux KODI 17 still worked).
Side note: I'm not talking about network browsing, but exact shares could also not be accessed anymore.

Since i suspected it could most likely be related to smb versions (and moving away from smbv1 for security reasons), i tried this:

- Installed http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/...=KB4487345 (no change, but couldn't hurt imho)

- Checking registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\LanmanServer\Parameters
Found DWORD "SMB1" set to 0
Changed it back to 1

Shares could be accessed again from the android devices.