So yesterday, I managed to successfully set up and run Samba on my Ubuntu laptop so that I can easily access files on the external hard drive that I have connected to it from my Windows 10 desktop PC.
Last night however, the laptop started having issues receiving an internet connection from my ethernet cable, so I rebooted the laptop which fixed it, but it seemed to have created another issue which prevented my Windows 10 PC from accessing the network folder which I had set up with Samba. The network folder icon would appear in the file explorer after typing in the IP address of my laptop, however when I'd click on it, I'd get some error stating the path "doesn't exist" or something like that, which wouldn't allow me to access it.
I tried doing some research and one of the methods I found was to remove the credentials from the Samba SMB server in Windows as shown here, then try reconnecting.
Well now I feel like an idiot because it seems like I made my problem worse, as now when I type the IP address of the laptop into the Windows file explorer address bar, it just says "This folder is empty."
To add insult to injury, I soon later discovered that it seemed like the initial problem was actually due to the smb.conf file in Ubuntu somehow being reset to default after rebooting the laptop, thus the specific file path that I had set up was removed which explains why I got that error message in Windows regarding the path not existing. So if only I had discovered this prior to trying any fixes on the Windows side, then most likely I would've had it working again...facepalm.
Anyway, I went ahead and set the configuration back to the way it was, reset Samba and ensured it's running properly, but I still cannot get my network folder to appear again on my desktop PC no matter what I do.
I tried adding back in the credentials on Windows with the IP address and user name of my Ubuntu laptop, nothing.
I tried changing these Windows features settings accordingly as many have suggested, nothing.
I tried installing wsdd on my Ubuntu laptop as many have also suggested, still nothing.
What's interesting however is that I'm able to connect to the network folder just fine on another laptop that I have running Windows 10, so I'm pretty sure it's not an issue on the Ubuntu laptop side, but I know I screwed something up bad on the desktop side which is preventing the network folder from appearing again in any capacity. I've spent so much time searching as to what the issue could be but nothing seems to work.
If anyone has any ideas I'd greatly appreciate it.
