Question Annoying networking problem in Windows 10

[SaleB]

I think this is more a Windows question than a networking question so I am posting it here. It has been annoying me for some time now. Each time Windows does its monthly update/restart routine I lose access to my network drives for a few days.

In the past, I have been running data disks on multiple Windows machines and accessed them from my main PC using shares and mapped network drives for permanent connections. That worked flawlessly even when different machines had different versions of Windows. Now, I am moving toward one central place for all data disks (which is a Debian-based VM on a Proxmox host. There are samba shares shared with the network and accessed from other devices in the network. Since it is for me the simplest to navigate from Windows I set up the mapped network drives for specific locations. When Windows boots for the first time I get the message that it could not connect to all network drives (actually to none of them). I see through my network the shares on a machine that is visible as a member of a workgroup. When I click on a share it opens the login window where I write my Samba credentials and I am greeted with this message:

https://imgur.com/a/dw4aObK

I do not think that I am accessing multiple resources with different credentials since there is only one Samba user on the machine that shares the folders. About a week later (since I do not turn off the Windows machine), when, I assume, the system flushes the credentials that made the problem the network connections work again until the next restart of the Windows machine (it does not happen on every restart, but it does happen on every system update restart). Is there a way to flush all the credentials used with some manual command (if that is the problem)?

I would assume that the network works fine because even when the problem exists I can open the file explorer app on my phone, select the content to be copied or moved from one device to the other, open shared folders on both, the Windows machine and the Samba share on Debian VM, and initiate the copy/move procedure, and it works (it is just slower and annoying, and it does not solve the problem of using external resources in Windows).

Can you suggest what to try to better understand the problem or a solution that might work?

Thank you

 

[Ralston18]

Windows 10: Edition & Version?

Source?

Look in Windows Update History - any failed or problem updates?

 

[SaleB]

Windows 10 Pro 22H2, 19045.3324; feature experience pack 1000.19041.1000.0

All 27 feature updates and 12 driver updates since 2022 went through without an error says the update history panel.

 

[SaleB]

Interestingly I am able to connect to the share using the command prompt by the use of Net Use, and to mount external shares using pushd and to copy using xcopy while I am still getting the same (above mentioned) error from Windows Explorer and still having red X-es on the icons of each drive.

Before I mounted the shares with Net Use, I listed all active sessions net session \\servername /list and there were none.

What am I missing?

 

[SaleB]

I might have solved it. It worked through a regular restart. We'll see after the next update if it still works, but other ideas and recommendations are still welcome.

I deleted all the folders corresponding to that server in the registry at this location: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2. Then I restarted the Windows Explorer process. Then I deleted all the mapped drives from "This PC" and created new ones with the same letters and same destinations, taking care to use the IP address of the server and not its computer_name. And it worked, no error, no message, that the letter is already assigned, or the above shown message. I restarted the Windows machine and the mapped drives got reconnected on startup.