As the title suggests it would stand to reason that theres a problem with the PC's not playing ball but thats where it gets a bit odd.

I have two Unraid servers one called unraid and one called dropbox, 2 x managed network switches and three Win11 client PC's

All set to DHCP and auto DNS.

All network shares are set to secure and all three client PC's have users set up specifically for SMB sharing between each other and the servers.

The two servers are set up with static IP's (at the moment) It doesnt make any difference if they are static or DHCP as Ive tried.

SMB1 and NETBIOS are all disabled in the Clients.

My router sees both servers with the correct names in DHCP config.

ACTUAL PROBLEM.

I can see dropbox server listed as dropbox in network section of file manager but I can only connect to the unraid server via unraid.local.

If I try to connect to just http://unraid it cant find the network path. I tried renewing and flushing dns for the clients but no joy.

Odd thing is all bonjour/mac settings in unraid are turned off, the network/SMB settings for both servers are identical (other than NIC brand)

Ive completely killed all the network settings on the clients just in case I borked some settings but even with a clean install of NIC's with default settings the problem persists.

And thats where my networking knowledge kinda peters out. Can anyone suggest anything new I can try to get this working?

I have included both servers diagnostics in case there's something there that might be causing issues.

Thanks

dropbox-diagnostics-20250828-1448.zip unraid-diagnostics-20250828-1447.zip

First thing. To connect via SMB, you need to be using

\\unraid

In Windows File Explorer (aka, Windows File Manager)--NOT a browser which your http://unraid implies you are trying.

Next thing. Start here and read the next three posts. They provide the steps required to setup a SMB connection.

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/191221-some-musings-on-smb-and-samba-and-unraid-and-windows/#findComment-1561581

Hi,

Yes Im aware if you put http in a file explorer window it just opens up a browser and then obviously still wont connect. \\unraid does work in a file window thats the problem. http://unraid doesnt work either in a browser it has to have the .local extension same as file explorer.

Unfortunately I have already implemented the hack around for getting PC's talking to other PCs on a network I was hoping that it might of been fixed by now and obviously Microsoft dont give a proverbial...

Google "what is the .local domain"

I tried it here and it did resolve to my Unraid server but I did not have a Windows credential set up for it so I prompted for a login and password. I am not a expert on networking but I am surmising the .local is a required requirement of the router to resolve when the resource is located-- not really SMB issue.

Edited August 28, 2025Aug 28 by Frank1940