Windows 10: Creating a samba share in windows 10

See my part a couple of paragraphs down about stopping this thread and starting a new one dedicated to the DLNA stuff if you think that we have gotten this thread a little muddy with all of the basics covered and now we are dedicating troubleshooting each part to get you up and running.

The DRM/DLNA devices you should be able to access with VLC. The Windows Login can be just for shares or for accessing the machine to be able to do things that you require a user to have a password. Your shares can be set for no password, but since there is an issue with the SAMBA that Microsoft uses, you have to still enter a password. Messed up I know, that is their fault when they stopped users from being able to use a Guest session.

CIFS is just an extension of Samba. When we deal with the whole Linux vs. Windows shares, you will tend to see most of us just post Samba, since it is what is doing the heavy work.

When I setup a Windows 10 machine, I just set it up with a "Local" account, since the whole email login for Microsoft's "Cloud" login tends to mess up with some elder versions of Samba that may be in use with some Linux Distro's.

If you change your profile to be local with just a username as what you use here, that can eliminate a lot of issues. If you are not using Classic Shell or Start 10, you have to go through Control Panel to check your Logins under your profile for the Network stuff. It can be done with a Startup Script also to make sure that you have those shares connected.

Your Bluray player is just looking for DLNA devices, which VLC can handle or in my case, my Synology NAS handles all of that, since I keep all media on it. The manufacturers use a standard Cast protocol, which can cause issues with say iOS. I use a Aircast app called Air Music.

What if we stop this thread and create a new one to deal with the DLNA stuff. The login stuff Jimbo may be able to work with you on that, since he has spent more time with Linux. If I do anything with a Linux Server, I use Webmin to allow me to go in and check some things that I do with a bench server I have.

You can check to make sure that your Linux shares are loaded at boot with your Linux system. Use this guide, which explains to make sure CIFS-Utils is installed. MountWindowsSharesPermanently - Ubuntu Wiki

 

Thanks a lot for all your replies bro67 ... but I'm still having difficulty understanding you. Your earlier reply was suggesting a registry change to allow unauthenticated samba access, but above you are suggesting that it can't be done. I would like to know which, so if it is not possible I can give up on that approach. Will changing from my microsoft account to a local account help with the unauthenticated shares? (I am using classic shell - since the default win10 start menu sucks if you ask me.)

I'm not sure where you got that idea, since I haven't mentioned DLNA. Remember I said the player can see the shared drives on my old winXP laptop, and winXP doesn't support DLNA (at least not natively). Back when I bought my bluray player (perhaps 5 years ago or more?), I bought one that used DLNA. I never got it to work reliably so I returned it and got one that used the traditional Samba/CIFS networking. This has worked flawlessly for me for years (well except when win10 came along). Perhaps DLNA has improved a lot back since then, but it left a bad taste in my memory. I'm not sure why we needed yet another networking protocol.

I'm not sure what linux system you are now referring to? My Android devices I was testing with ES file manager? Although they run linux in the background I didn't think I have (or want) access to that. Likewise, although I am fairly certain my bluray player is running linux, I also have no access to that and can't configure it in any way other than entering a CIFS/samba username and password (as I've mentioned several times already, but perhaps nobody believes).

~Paul

 

Editing the registry does not always work with Home. It used to be a quick fix with XP when it would not work with a Linux machine that had Samba Shares or a person was trying to access Windows shares from Linux.

Android is basically Linux in how it is written, but it is made to be lightweight and is used mostly for streaming devices.

With Android you do have to use something to work as a FTP server or able to allow you to access shares on the network. With Android it is all done through the app's, since Google did not incorporate that as a separate feature. On my NVIDIA Shield, I run ANDFTP on it to allow me to access network shares. It does not always connect to them in the background, because that is a part of the security features with Android.

Majority of Blu-Ray players still use Java. Those that may used embedded Linux can be more expensive.

I would break down each issue that you are dealing with. First step is to get all machines on the network to connect and be able to get to the outside world. The next would be deciding what you are going to share and how you are going to share it. Along with if it is Media that is Music, videos or ripped DVD files.

With some Android devices you do have to enable the Developer options before you may be able to get it to access other computers. I honestly think that Android embedded devices are a whole lot harder to work with, especially with apps like Kodi.