Can someone ELI5 an annoyance I have accessing my shares via SMB and File Explorer from a Win11 PC on my network? Basically, why does it sometimes access the "TOWER" right away, but other times I get "ACCESS DENIED"? I have an uNRaid user that matches my Windows user. In File Explorer on Windows, the shares show up in the navigation pane's "Network" group as "TOWERNAME". IF that's displayed, I can just double click and get right into the shares as expected. Sometimes, however, I have to expand the "Network" group. If that's the case and I try to click on "TOWERNAME", I get Access Denied. Also, the 2nd scenario seems to always be the case when accessing vie a "Browse..." menu for saving files. In either case, I am always able to access if I type the IP address into File Explorer's address bar regardless of how TOWERNAME displays in the navigation pane.

 

I'm a networking idiot so I don't know if this is due to my bad configuration or just quirk in how windows does SMB?

Name resolution is always a bit flaky, accessing by IP is best.