Please Help RISC OS on Windows 10

Hi,

I’m going to admit I know next to nothing technical but seeing as I’m in my 20s my Grandfather has come to me for help after buying a new laptop.

He’s trying to use lanman98 from his desktop to share the hard disc on the new laptop which runs on Windows 10. We’ve almost got it there and have already gone through the common error people find of having the SMB1 turned off but have now run into a different problem.
When we try and connect it, it comes up with an error message saying “Error when reading LanMan98;; laptop.$ – connection down”

If more info is needed, ask and I’ll try to provide, but any help or advice we can get is much appreciated.

Thanksxx

That’s odd, I can’t get either LanMan98 or LanManFS to connect to either of my Windows 10 devices today. It used to work! I have tried turning SMB1 off and on again in Windows features, which did not help.

That’s odd,

Not odd here … I have just connected using Lanman98 to a couple of shares on my Win10pro laptop.

I am not sure exactly what the ‘connection down’ message is referring to, though. Presumably because he has had the SMB problems there is a physical connection. Sometimes I have found after changing networky stuff (particularly Windows) that a re-boot can make things magically spring into life. But note the sometimes.

Not odd here

It is a bit less odd here now, sharing is now working on both Windows 10 devices after resetting Sharing Properties for the folders to be shared.

It is a bit less odd here now, sharing is now working on both Windows 10 devices after resetting Sharing Properties for the folders to be shared.

My guess is that a recent update that slid in while you weren’t looking “just” made some “small” changes to the security settings.
It didn’t notify you because as a user you’re not clever enough to understand the wisdom of MS.
Similar situations (status of virtual interface for remote access on my work W7¹ machine and the wife’s personal W10 machine)

¹ The sequence of updates hasn’t got to my laptop yet, and yes Win7 is getting updates which do bugger about with things.

Just for information, my Windows10 laptop is up to date with updates, and I don’t have any problem using Omni.

Hi Charlotte,

You don’t say if the Windows laptop and RISC OS machines can see each other on the home network.

Also how is the RISC OS machine and laptop set up to obtain Ip addresses from the router , is it via DHCP or manually set IP addresses.

One thing to try is to see if the RISCOS machine can talk to the laptop at a network level first.

So find out the name of the Windows laptop via Settings>System>About

Then on your RISC OS machine open up a task window, far right icon on the iconbar and click the middle menu mouse button and then select TaskWindow.

At the * prompt in the task window type ping “Your windows laptop name”

You should get some information back that tells you they can both talk like below:

ping “Name of your laptop”
PING “Name of your laptop” (xxx.xxx.×.x): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from xxx.xxx.×.xx: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=184.813 ms
64 bytes from xxx.xxx.×.xx: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=4.338 ms

If you can’t then the network isn’t set up correctly.

IF you do get a positive response then try checking out this networking help guide

Let us know how you get on.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the advice!
The RISCOS machine can ping the laptop so at least we know the network is set up.

Unfortunately, once we established this and worked through the networking guide you pointed us to (we did exactly as it said) and still ran into the same connection error message.

Thank you again for trying though, it’s greatly appreciated.

Have you been through Bernard’s Networking Tips?

In April this year I brought a new Windows Desktop and couldn’t get the RISC OS machine to talk to it using LanMan98, V2.05. His notes relate to Bullguard Internet Security for which I also had a trial version. Whatever I did I couldn’t get it to connect. I eventually tried Kaspersky Internet Security which worked on an old laptop. I did eventually get it to work. Have you tried connecting with the Security firewall disabled? Do remember to switch it on immediately you’ve done the test.

Bernard asked me to report what I’d done but having tried so many things I couldn’t remember. His tutorial mentions changing some of the Packet Rule Firewall settings when using Kaspersky – unfortunately instructions are for 2014 which are unlikely to be relevant in 2020.

If you haven’t already done so go through his procedure – its very detailed and hopefully you’ll get it to work.

https://www.bapfish.org.uk/networking.htm

Hi Charlotte,

I have sent your grandfather a few more things to try , hopefully we will get him sorted.

Richard Ashby said

Have you been through Bernard’s Networking Tips?

I sent Charlotte’s grandfather that link and it is the one she mentioned they went through and the SMB 1 issues got resolved due to that.

Charlotte,

I have also now sent an email with Vince Hudd’s guide to setting up a Windows folder for access from RISC OS.

It has some very good and clear pictures as part of the guide
.

The RISC OS side details using OmniClient and LanManFS so that bit can be ignored for now though we may try it to rule out a LanMan98 specific issue at a later stage.

Take care

Doug

I hadn’t realised Vince had also produced a guide – excellent. I’m sure Charlotte’s grandfather will find it useful as will I (retained for future use). Perhaps if Charlotte ever sorts it out she’ll post a reply here – I hope her note-taking is better than mine ;-) Dare I say this but since I’ve got LanMan98 (V2.05) talking to Windows I’ve had no further issues (Windows Home 10, V.1909). I use it quite a lot for networking BB4B program files to RISC OS.

Windows 10 updates usually change back the sharing permissions so that could be the issue.
If the firewall is turned off, can you access the share? If so, then you need to alter the network sharing permissions.
Don’t forget to turn your firewall back on.
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Network and Sharing Center\Advanced sharing settings
Turn on network discovery
Turn on file and print sharing
Turn on sharing so anyone can read and write to public files
Turn off user name and passwords requirements

Having followed this thread with more than normal interest, I’m now at the point that I can share a single folder on my Windows 10 computer and access that folder on my RISC OS computer through LanMan98.

However, I want to share the entire disc – both the C and the D disc. Has anyone succeeded in doing that? (It used to be no problem in a not so distant past.)

I think Windows doesn’t allow the sharing of the root of any drive by default. There is a backdoor route round this, but it would require connection using administrator credentials.

Hurray! I finally succeeded to access the entire drive again. There’s a lot to be found about this on the internet, but it was a YouTube video that eventually revealed the secret of what to do exactly on the windows side. If others want to see that video too:
https://youtu.be/GU0L0lZ1zBI

I want to share the entire disc – both the C and the D disc.

You need to think about this – there is a reason it’s made difficult. One of the easier ways for virus/malware to get on to your computer is via Windows shares, and if that share is the boot partition, the result is complete control over the machine.

You may think that being behind a router prevents this – and with a properly configured router it’s true for connections coming in over the landline. However most home networks have wireless, and the wireless access is inside the router’s boundary. Then again if it’s a laptop, it can connect to wireless networks when out of the house, and there’s no protection there either.

You need to think about this

Hm… joy is over.
But wouldn’t the virus protector stop the malware that tries to use the Windows share? Mine is BitDefender, the paid version. And I don’t have a laptop. How much greater exactly is the risk when sharing the whole drive? Fiddling with settings during many weeks for a joy of 30 minutes is hm… quite sad.

It’s far safer and much wiser to just share specific folders than to give full access to the whole disc, which is why I didn’t give the details on access the root of a remote drive earlier. Even worse is sharing the root with little or no protection, like weak or no passwords and SMB1 so that it can be accessed from RISC OS like I’ve seen suggested many times. I certainly don’t access any of my Windows systems from RISC OS but use Sunfish to access shares on the NAS boxes which are also shared via SMB2/3 from Windows. I only use the backdoor drive root access to and from Windows machines using domain admin accounts and strong passwords within the network or over VPN, and only when and for as long as necessary. You can’t fully expect anti-virus to catch everything all the time, so always limit access as much as possible.

I do hope you get it sorted, good luck.

Well, I have made a compromise: I decided to unshare the C drive, and keep the D drive shared. The latter contains all of the user documents in the first place. You will probably warn me again, but those data are divided over so many folders that it would be insane to have a long row of Omni discs on the icon bar (let alone to activate them one by one after each boot). Actually, this has been the situation since many years anyway, and no hacker has found me yet (famous last words).