Connecting to a linux share from windows

I’ve been having one of those annoying problems connecting to my NAS that I wasn’t able to pin down.  Finally after a bit of a rummage on the internet I stumbled across the following on Tomshardware.com:

Hi all,
I have  a similar problem with Ubuntu Server and Windows Vista and Seven.
I have created a share on Samba with user and password. I opened some ports on the firewall to allow access outside.
I can see the share and mapping the disk with this command:

NET USE Z: \\publicIP\share “PASSWORD” /USER:user

The problem is that: When I’m opening a file (Excel for example) this file is always in ready only mode. With Windows XP everything works fine.
Can this fix resolve my problems?

Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Local Security Policy
Local Policies – Security Options
Network security: LAN Manager authentication level
Send LM & NTLM responses
Minimum session security for NTLM SSP
Disable Require 128-bit encryption

I basically had the same issue.

With mine it all came down to the fact that windows didn’t like “multiple” connections using different usernames, in my case one username and one anonymous access.

So, if anyone else comes across this bloody simple yet irritating problem do the following:

  1. Run “net use” from a command prompt to see if you are already connected to \\share on your windows PC.
  2. If you are then sever that connection using “net use” again with an added “/delete” switch.
  3. Reconnect using the login and password using either “net use” or explorer.

Sounds simple but it took me ages to figure out purely because I wasn’t logging in to begin with!