I have a Win7 machine which is connected to a perfectly ordinary Samba share. Suddenly, it has started refusing to connect to it with error 0x80070035 -- "the network path was not found". Attempting to login with its IP address \\192.168.x.x does not work either. When I attempt to diagnose the problem, it helpfully tells me that there's nothing there to connect to, which I know is complete baloney. I can ping the IP address. I can ping the server by hostname. I can even ping it by its SAMBA name. It just never tried.

Checking in the firewall settings, "file and printer sharing" was disabled. Enabling it made zero difference. I also made sure 'network discovery' and 'core networking' weren't firewalled.

I set the NTLM authentication level to 2 in the registry as many things suggest(being Win7 Home, Microsoft helpfully removed the control panel applet to manage that properly), this also made no difference.

I've uninstalled any antivirus and firewall products, and disabled the firewall on the server itself for the time being.

Enabling NETBIOS under WINS settings inside TCP/IP advanced settings made no difference.

I've updated to a newer version of Samba(inconveniencing the office as everyone needed to put their passwords back in) to no effect.

Another identical(same model, same OS, same software, same apparent configuration) Windows 7 machine works absolutely fine, just like this one did before it threw this fit.

I've added the following lines to smb.conf at the suggestion of various sources:

Code:

netbios name = myservername
client ntlmv2 auth = yes
client lanman auth = yes
ntlm auth = yes
lanman auth = yes

...to no effect.

Hunting on the internet for this error finds dozens of users screaming about the problem and dozens of conflicting solutions, none of which work for me.

The server logs show absolutely zero indication that the PC in question has ever even tried to access the samba share. Meanwhile all our Windows XP clients still work fine, as well as the identical Windows 7 machine across the room -- identical model, identical OS, identical apparent settings, on the exact same local network.

Does anyone have any insights?

---------- Post updated at 10:59 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:37 AM ----------

Resetting Windows Firewall to defaults (then re-enabling file+printer sharing, etc) made no difference.

Deleting and re-installing the network device made no difference.

netsh winsock reset made no difference.

---------- Post updated at 11:19 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:59 AM ----------

Running a long cable from her PC to the same switch the server is plugged into made no difference.