Troubles with sharing files on Windows 10

It’s a bold statement, but after getting very frustrated last night, I thought I’d share a few revelations, and the troubles I had in sharing some files.

Recently, I spun up a couple of LinuxMint VMs. These typically have worked well, but there are areas where I’ve struggled, and at this point, I’m sharing about file sharing – from a Windows 10 box.

Here is the scenario. I want to share a folder that is inside the C:\Program Files (x86).

To be exact, it’s this one. I want to share this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\StationPlaylist\Playlist\

It works fine in MacOSX as a shared drive, but, when it comes to Linux, it’s a whole different ball game, and it just doesn’t want to play ball.

I have plenty of other shared folders on that Windows10 computer, and they all work fine. But, a folder buried in the “Program Files”, just doesn’t want to play ball.

I went through many versions of Samba config files, authentication methods, username/passwords, domain, problems with updates, SMB versions and a whole bunch of things. I even had to create a username and password in Windows, because LinuxMint didn’t want to just do an anonymous user login.

… in the end I gave up, extremely frustrated. Why does it have to be so difficult?? It works fine on the Macs… but not Linux.

I tried on last thing thing and made a fresh share on the Windows box, put it in “C:\Playlist” and shared it, and the share worked immediately.

Windows10 is a pain as it is, but throwing in Linux to the mix as well… it quickly turns to a nightmare.

Here is the connection procedure… The attempt to connecting to the share is from the “Program Files” share. That fails brilliantly. The second share, “C:\Playlist”, works spectacularly.