Creating a reliable connection to PC

[zombiecakes]

Is it possible to have a stable network with a PC that doesnt require restarting the Mac since the Mac can no longer communicate with the PC?

I'm able to connect to Windows 10 fine on the first try to do file sharing, but after not using it for awhile it randomly stops working and while I can see the PC and shared folders in the list of devices it cant load anything when I try to connect. The only way to reconnect with the PC is to restart the Mac. (OSX and Windows 10 is updated to the latest)

Is this an unsolvable issue? Is it my router losing the connection because it wasnt made with Mac networking in mind? I have a CISCO E3000, would an Airport Extreme maintain a reliable connection with a PC?

If I cant fix it is there a way I can kill all network connections manually instead of restarting the computer?

 

[hobowankenobi]

Hard to say.

First things first: The Win box is essentially a server in this scenario. Be sure it never goes to sleep. It should have a static (or DHCP reservation) so the IP address can never change.

Could be possible that firewall settings or other security options on the Win box interfere or cause a disconnect. Do you connect to the Win box IP address? Might review this and this....compared to your setup.

Barring a non-standard configuration, it is unlikely the router is the issue. Over the years, I have seen a few consumer-grade routers that would nice play nice with Macs (primarily WiFi connections), but that was rare a decade ago, and I have not seen it myself in many years.

 

[zombiecakes]

Everything already has a static IP and the PC never goes to sleep. I normally access the PC via the finder sidebar since it shows up there, once that stops working I use the "connect to server" thing and put in cifs://*IP*, when the CIFS connection stops working I have to restart.

The old connections show that they are still connected but wont work and I'm not able to disconnect them with the eject button. Sometimes I will get a popup window asking if I want to ignore or disconnect the drive but selecting disconnect doesnt do anything. I have to restart the computer to access the PC again.

Generally 3 things happen seemingly at random:

- I click on the networked PC, I can see the shared folders, I open a folder and it says "0 items" with a loading animation in the corner, it stays like that forever. This is the most common problem.

- I click on the networked PC, get an error that says it cant be found. Not very common.

- I get the "0 items" thing so I try "connect to server" and a window pops up letting me select from a list of shared folders, some of the folders will be greyed out if I have already opened them, I select a new shared folder, the connection is revitalised and I can fully access the PC via the sidebar link again. Has about a 20% chance of working if I get the 0 items issue.

 

[satcomer]

Hey Zombie you might be running into timing errors so maybe using the same timing server in both machines to clear things up!

 

[hobowankenobi]

To be clear, the Mac is not sleeping either, correct?

You might try making your first connection via Connect to Server using:

smb://*IP*

That will give you a SMB2 connection (vs. SMB1). Does it behave any better?

Is the Mac wired, or Wifi? If WiFi, have you tried a wired connection to see if it behaves differently...just to test and see if it a wireless issue?