Can't access SMB from my Mac Studio to my new PC

[sebalvarez]

I have a Mac Studio and two PCs. One PC is old, the other one I just built. Both PCs have Windows 11 with everything updated. With my old PC, accessing its shares from my Mac was very easy. Cmd+K, and since the server was already there, press enter. But the server address was always:

smb://[computername]/[share name]

If it was the first time accessing that share, it would prompt me to enter as a guest, or enter a login and password, with the option to save it in Keychain, which I always did. And the login and password were always the same as the Microsoft online account (a miserable failure in security if you ask me, but creating a local account in Windows 11 leads to all kinds of issues). This would work each and every time without fail. This even works now that I have moved that PC to another room, and the only thing connecting to the network is this $20 USB adapter with two antennae.

A few weeks ago I built a new PC, with Windows 11 Pro, and both the Mac and the PC are connected to the same router. Well, I have no way to access the new PC from the Mac. It shows in the network if I browse, but it doesn't take the credentials. It does the shaky thing. And I tried entering the password manually, I tried copying it and pasting it from the passwords in the system, and even going to the Microsoft website to log out and then back in to verify that the password works, and it does.

I compared my network sharing settings between the old PC and the new one, and they are identical. The old PC being in another room and with a poor Wi-Fi signal, I wouldn't surprised if it was giving me trouble. But the Mac and new PC are connected via a router I bought just two months ago, with 2.5 Gbps on each ethernet port.

Now, every google search I did comes back with a pile of results about troubleshooting measures that are obvious and I already looked at. But this seems to be a further level from all that, and I'm dumbfounded. If anyone has any suggestions, please share.

 

[Bigwaff]

In Windows 11 Pro, did you share with Everyone or specific user?

 

[sebalvarez]

In Windows 11 Pro, did you share with Everyone or specific user?

Well, I tried both. Usually I delete the everyone user and search for my user, add it, give it full permissions, and click ok. That’s the way it’s setup with my old PC and it works without a hitch.

But just in case, I created a share leaving the everyone user and even giving it full permissions. Didn’t make a difference. There’s something weird here that is part of the user authentication process that doesn’t work.

 

[sebalvarez]

In fact, I just went to the old PC, and that's the way I have all the shares, which work perfectly. Meaning, all of them without the everyone user, my own user added with full read and write permissions.

Furthermore, I just opened the old PC in Remote Desktop so I have them side by side, one in each monitor. And I'm comparing all the proper settings, like what I mentioned, the network sharing settings, and all the firewall entries. On both machines, everything is setup exactly the same. However, I can mount network shares from the old PC like a breeze, and I can't access the ones in the new PC.

 

[Bigwaff]

Happen to be using the same username/password combo on both Windows systems?

 

[sebalvarez]

Happen to be using the same username/password combo on both Windows systems?

Yes, that’s basically what happens with Windows these days. Imagine if Apple forced you to use your iCloud login and password as your Mac’s login and password. Apple doesn’t but Microsoft does.

While you can create an old style local account, you have to put up with messages everywhere to use your Microsoft online account or your life will be oh so very hard.

 

[sebalvarez]

Well, problem solved. It was, as usual, Microsoft's incompetence. I thought I'd change the Microsoft account password and see what happens. After that, I could connect without problems. Even though I setup my account with a brand new Windows 11 Pro OEM DVD that I paid 170 bucks for, and I set it as a Microsoft account, not a local account.

It's mindboggling how a company with such a poor attention to detail makes so much money. But what else can we do? Either Apple frees macOS for PCs, or Linux. Apple will never do that, and Linux is great if you only have to do a few things and don't require the software that most of us use.