I think you have to specifically cripple all the security on modern Samba for older standard machines to be able to connect. But in general, the usual way with 3.11 wfwg 95 and 98 networking seemed to be, you'd set everything right, reboot, nothing worked, double check settings reboot, nothing worked, triple check settings, reboot, nothing worked, quadruple check settings, reboot... well shit, it's doing it now, what the hell, I didn't even have to change a thing from the first damn time I set it....

edit: a faint and ancient itch from a neuron about to expire from an old age says something about bindings, make sure SMB bound to TCP/IP

gary87 wrote on 2024-09-04, 23:40:

I have been trying to follow several guides to connect my windows 3.1 computer to a samba share

Did you tell Samba to use "CIFS"? I vaguely remember that SMB1 is not a valid option, but CIFS is.
CIFS was the alternate description to SMB in the WfW3.11/Win95 days.

https://www.upguard.com/blog/cifs-vs-smb

Works fine on my Netgear router. What router are you using? I remember running into an issue with w95 when connecting to this router. Since it was still under support at the time, I had the Netgear firmware guys fix the issue in a subsequent release. They had me do all sorts of tests, the details of which have been lost to time. At the time, they had asked me to downgrade the firmware (fixed the issue), promising to revert this change in the next release. Never had an issue with it again.

Maybe ensure that both your systems are on the same workgroup and that you have password disabled. I think Windows 3.11 only allows for 8 character passwords. This was an annoying limitation I ran into, thus I decided to share between computers using a password-free NAS on my router. I don't keep anything sensitive on the NAS, usually just old software installers, drivers, etc.

On the rare occasion that a vintage system doesn't autodetect my router's NAS, I can manually type in the path, and sharing then works.

Ensure you have the Microsoft TCP/IP installed. I think I have a few other packages installed as well. Is NetBEUI ever used here?

Feels to me like there was a similar thread on this subject about 2 years ago, but related to win9x.

I think what OP is saying is the option in File manager to map a drive itself is totally missing, not that it doesn't work?

If thats the case you can run the command to get around the issue
net use x: //server/share

But I wonder if windows has TCP protocol installed but not the actual networking component.

I'd check your settings against this guide, Maybe even share a folder on the WFW machine for good measure
https://www.geocities.ws/politalk/net/win311.htm

chinny22 wrote on 2024-09-05, 05:48:

I think what OP is saying is the option in File manager to map a drive itself is totally missing, not that it doesn't work? […]
Show full quote

I think what OP is saying is the option in File manager to map a drive itself is totally missing, not that it doesn't work?

If thats the case you can run the command to get around the issue
net use x: //server/share

But I wonder if windows has TCP protocol installed but not the actual networking component.

I'd check your settings against this guide, Maybe even share a folder on the WFW machine for good measure
https://www.geocities.ws/politalk/net/win311.htm

If that's the case, perhaps he can share a screenshot. From my recollection, the network connect option is an icon-button on the File Manager header.

My experience is with the official Windows 3.11 release. I'm not sure if Windows 3.10 + TCP package = Windows 3.11. Does it?

What network card are you using? I've had the best of luck with 3Com Etherlink III, 10Base-T cards. One time I was having an issue with it, though, and I just reinstalled the 3Com driver and the TCP package, and all worked.