Windows PC Cannot Access Network Drive

[johndon68]

I have four hard drives (all Western Digital 'My Cloud') connected to my network. My main (Windows 10 Enterprise) PC can see all four of the drives but, if I try to access two of them, I get the following error:

Windows cannot access \\XXXXXX
Check the spelling of the name
Error code: 0x80070035
The network path was not found

I've googled the problem and tried the solutions offered by pretty much every link on the first page of results.

A few other things to note:

1. The two problem drives were, until a few weeks ago, accessible from the PC - no hardware has been changed on the system at all, the only possible change would have been a Windows Update.
2. My MacBook Pro, on the same network, can access the two drives with no problems.
3. One of the drives holds all my ripped CDs for use with a SONOS multi room music system. The SONOS can still access that drive with no problems and the music plays.
4. I have a media player for ripped Blu Rays and that can also access both drives.

I'd appreciate any suggestions...

John

 

[DontAsk]

Not a solution to your problem but make sure everything is backed up safely in an alternative form.

WD claim they are not susceptible to the same vulnerability that has allowed My Book Live devices to be wiped remotely, but I would not trust them at this stage.

 

[johndon68]

Not a solution to your problem but make sure everything is backed up safely in an alternative form.

All backed up to the cloud as well and a couple of USB hard drives.

 

[Alcom IT]

This is going to be tough to answer without investigating properly but I would start with SMB encryption and Local Group Policy. Purely a guess but it may be that 2 of the disks are older than the others and don't comply with Windows 10 newer SMB encryption.

It could also be a recent Windows update. It's one of those issues that you need to start at one end and work backwards until you find the cause.

 

[johndon68]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will take a look. As it happens, the two problem drives are newer than the two drives that I can still access in Windows.

John

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Just for curiosity if you create new windows user account can you mount the drives from there.

Would narrow it down to Windows credentials issues. Do you mount by IP address or name?

 

[johndon68]

Just tried a new account and it has the same problem, i.e. can access two of the four drives but the other two, whilst found on the network, cannot be accessed. The drives are mounted by name.

 

[KM-Tiger]

This sort of problem used to be much more prevalent back in Windows95 days.

Have you tried using the 'net' command at a command prompt?

It used to be the case that this method would mount drives where the GUI dialogs failed.

 

[johndon68]

This sort of problem used to be much more prevalent back in Windows95 days.

Have you tried using the 'net' command at a command prompt?

It used to be the case that this method would mount drives where the GUI dialogs failed.

Thanks very much for that, using that brought up the following message:

You can't access this shared folder because your organization's security policies block unauthenticated guest access. These policies help protect your PC from unsafe or malicious devices on the network.

Which then allowed me to find the relevant Local Group Policy setting to change and those drives are now accessible.

John

 

[TBLZ]

It could be an authentication problem. Are you able to log in to the problematic Western Digital NAS devices through a browser? If so, make a note of the username and password. Then restart the Workstation service on your computer (to clear any cached credentials), open a command prompt, and type "IT SEEMS I CANNOT POST THIS BECAUSE IT CONTAINS A UNC PATH WHICH UK BUSINESS FORUMS INTERPRETS AS A LINK - PM ME FOR THE COMMAND" where X: is the drive letter you wish to map, NAS is the hostname of one of your problematic Western Digital NAS devices, Share is the name of the top-level share folder you wish to access, password is the password you noted down, and username is the username you noted down. Careful: in Linux, which is the default operating system for NAS devices, the username is case-sensitive too.

Esther

 

[johndon68]

It could be an authentication problem. Are you able to log in to the problematic Western Digital NAS devices through a browser? If so, make a note of the username and password. Then restart the Workstation service on your computer (to clear any cached credentials), open a command prompt, and type "IT SEEMS I CANNOT POST THIS BECAUSE IT CONTAINS A UNC PATH WHICH UK BUSINESS FORUMS INTERPRETS AS A LINK - PM ME FOR THE COMMAND" where X: is the drive letter you wish to map, NAS is the hostname of one of your problematic Western Digital NAS devices, Share is the name of the top-level share folder you wish to access, password is the password you noted down, and username is the username you noted down. Careful: in Linux, which is the default operating system for NAS devices, the username is case-sensitive too.

Esther

Thanks but, as per my last post in this thread, the problem was solved on Monday.

 

[TBLZ]

Thanks but, as per my last post in this thread, the problem was solved on Monday.

Sorry, missed that.

 

[MARMARLADE]

I know from recent personal experience that the solution to this problem is a needle is a haystack of solutions that simply don't work.

Last year I did find one solution through, on youtube.

I'd have to dig it up again, so let me know if you still need to know.

 

[MARMARLADE]

Ah I see you solved it already

 

[johndon68]

Whilst it was sorted, this has developed a bit of a twist - since yesterday, one of the drives that could be accessed last week is now inaccessible via File Explorer with the same 0x80070035 error code.

As before, every other device on the network can still access it but, more oddly this time is that, from the Windows PC, I can FTP to the drive using FileZilla and read/write but File Explorer just cannot access it...

 

[MARMARLADE]

As a new user I cannot post links, so look for a youtube vid called "How To Set Up Windows 10 Network Sharing" with the id "zmjUabTu4Qk".

This just worked for me, as I had to set it up again after building a new PC. You can skip where he talks about old versions of Windows.

 

[AW-UK]

I found an issue with an older machine that stopped network mapped drives being accessible, it happened on a Windows 7 laptop circa 2012 ish, and everytime you reboot the machine it worked fine, if you put it to "sleep" and turned it back on it used to say this until I rebooted, what worked for that machine in the end was disabling IPV6 in the adapter settings, it had worked flawlessly for several years after until it was replaced.

Perhaps not the same issue but might help someone out, never seen it on Windows 10 so far.

 

[Hooble]

Hello John,

Is it potentially a DNS lookup issue, are you using the hostname or the IP Address of the device to access the share?