Can you manually access the PC from dolphin

To enter a manual address:
Press ctrl -> l

In the URL box type in:

smb://IP-address <press enter>

Do you see the shares?

Just tried that, and it didn't work either.

Some PCs just keep showing "Loading files" endlessly without ever actually displaying anything, while others ask for a password and if I bypass that then access is denied. In either case, nothing visible happens in Dolphin the next time I try.

Why are you still using SMBv1? You don't need it to get this working. It was removed from Windows for a reason.

After switching SMBv1 off, the next thing would be to switch off the firewalls on all machines connected to your router. Use the firewall built into your router to protect your whole network.

After doing these things, you should be able to use the SMB browser in Dolphin to view your shares, by entering:

smb://192.168.x.x/sharename

Into the address bar. If it doesn't work on Dolphin, try Konqueror instead. You will need to enter the user name and password for the shares you want to access. It won't work without doing this.

How can I tell if SMBv1 is being used?

Separately... Up until just a couple of weeks ago, I didn't use to have to enter passwords, nor did I ever have to turn off firewalls on the machines connected to the router. If now I have to start entering passwords just to copy a file from one machine to another, I'll simply use thumb drives and sneakernet the files over. Too much work, too complicated.

In Windows 10 to see if SMBv1 is still enabled.

1. In Control Panel, select Programs.

2. Under Control Panel Home, select Turn Windows features on or off to open the Windows Features box.

3. In the Windows Features box, scroll down the list and look for a SMB 1.0 checkbox. If not checked or missing then it isn't being used.

In Windows 7 check the registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
REG_DWORD: 1 = Enabled

I expect that it will be enabled for W7. WS-Discovery was available in W7.

I mostly use WinSCP to transfer files from Windows to linux.

There most be another rule that needs to be add since without UFW everything works for me. Its a new install so not sure if there is something different with an upgrade.

Thanks, I looked in the Win7 machine and no value is listed for SMB1 in the Registry there. Also looked under Features on the Win10 system and the box for SMB1 is there, but not checked.

File share with no password is quite insecure. It's part of the reason Microsoft killed SMBv1.

Konqueror and Dolphin can be set to remember your username and password, so you'll only have to enter them the first time you access a share.

Not complicated at all

Yes, I understand that if this were a company or other network with a lot of participants, then passwords are a wise policy. But this is a home network: if a stranger has physical access to the computers on it, then I have much bigger problems to worry about than lack of password protection.

Still aiming for a solution that doesn't involve passwords.

As I said, you only have to enter it the first time you access a share... and you may not even have to do that if you have the same username & password on all of your machines.
You won't find one, unless you go for PKI... which is yet more complicated.

You need to learn to embrace the passwords my friend.

Supposing that I do go that route, then these passwords -- are they the same as the password that one would set up to boot into each machine, or is it a different kind of password?

Just to make sure I understand the idea, let's say that I have a Windows laptop that's protected with a password so that when I travel with it, a thief couldn't see what's on it by simply turning it on. And let's say that this password is "Cleopatra." So, when the laptop is at home and connected to my LAN, is "Cleopatra" the password that I'd be using to access its shared folders from other computers on the LAN? Or would this access password be a different one, specific to network use?

Windows sharing password protection would be with an existing username / password on the laptop i.e. the same as when you login. Windows has additional protection based on private/public networks. If you specify your connecting to a public network you can have network discovery and file sharing automatically turn off.

For me everything works when UFW is turned off. The iptables rule posted earlier does seem to work i.e. allow me to connect to shares when UFW is running. You should also be able to manually access the share as described in post #16 regardless of being able to "see" the PC under network.

As posted I am not sure how your system is different from mine since it is a fresh install.

OK, so if I understand this, then implementing @rkelsen's suggestion would involve setting up a login password for every one of the computers on the LAN. Even if, as he suggests, I were to set Dolphin to enter the password on its own when I wanted to access a share, the tradeoff would be that I would be stuck with a password ("standard account" in Windows terms) on all the Windows machines.

I do value the ability to "just do it" when I want/need to make changes to the Windows systems, without the tollgate of passwords. (Not to worry, my Windows machines are all well protected with multiple layers of defense.)

One additional data bit: @rkelsen brought up Konqueror, an application that I know little about and have used even less. Out of curiosity, I launched it and tried to access the other computers on the LAN. And FWIW, with Konqueror I managed to access the shared folder on one particular Windows 7 laptop that, every time I try to access it via Dolphin, results in Dolphin crashing.

Maybe this will yield some useful clues as to what's going on.

Maybe, konqueror is a combination web browser and file manager. I'm not exactly sure why Dolphin crashes.

dolphin and konqueror use a virtual filesystem to connect to shares called kio. There could be version mismatch between dolphin and the kio samba slave.

I've made some progress on this issue and I'd like to give an update.

There is in my desk drawer a Live CD of Netrunner 16.16 Ozymandias. As an experiment, I slid it into a Windows laptop and booted the Live CD to see if it could find (browse) the other computers on the network.

Wouldn't you know it, Netrunner saw all of the computers on the LAN -- Linux and Windows both! I was even able to copy a file from the Netrunner disc to a public folder on a Windows PC without needing to enter any names or passwords.

So I copied the smb.conf file from Netrunner to a laptop running Kubuntu. This machine was previously unable to find (via Dolphin) anything other that the desktop Kubuntu machine. I compared its smb.conf file to that of Netrunner and made edits to the former to match the latter, hoping that this would do some magic.

Now when I click on "Network" in Doplphin, it can find one Windows PC (a Windows 10 system) in addition to the desktop Kubuntu machine. However, when I click on "Shared folders (SMB)" in Dolphin, I'm still getting the error message "Unable to find any workgroups in your local network."

Note that Netrunner 16.16 had NO problem finding the workgroup. (I can't speak for what newer versions of Netrunner might do.) So it looks like whatever the cause of my problem is, has to do with more than the smb.conf file, and it may be some change that occurred between 2016 and now.

No no, you have it wrong.

smb.conf is the configuration file for a SAMBA server... it is not used by the client at all. Changing this file will have no impact upon your machine's ability to "see" other machines on your LAN.
But as I mentioned above, Dolphin doesn't use the smb.conf file at all.

If you want to "browse" network shares, you need to make sure you've got Avahi installed, with hostname resolution set up as follows:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Ava...ame_resolution

I don't have (nor want) Avahi on my machine so I just use IP addresses: smb://192.168.x.x/share_name ...never fails. For ease of use (and because I can't remember everything), I use KDE's desktop shortcuts "Link to URL" with the smb:// format. Never fails either.

Edit: I downloaded the Netrunner iso and fired it up in a VM. Can confirm that it comes with Avahi pre-configured to browse networks.