[Samba] Samba and Vista?

[Marc Chamberlin]

Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
>> I just purchased a new HP laptop running Vista Home Premium on it, 
>> turned it on and was able to get it to connect to the Internet through 
>> my home wireless network. But when I tried to see other computers on my 
>> network I got nadda... One of my computers is running Win2K so perhaps 
>> that is understandable, one XP Pro which I don't understand why Vista 
>> can't see it, and three of my computers are running SuSE Linux 10.1 and 
>> 10.2 with Samba servers.  All of my computers can see the Vista laptop, 
>> and mount shares from it, so that part of Samba on the Linux machines 
>> seems to be working fine.
>> Doing a bit of research into this problem I discovered that Microsoft 
>> has implemented a network protocol called Link Layer Topology Discovery 
>> (LLTD) that is suppose to allow a Vista computer to discover the 
>> services provided by other computers on a network.
>>     
>
> I don't think LLTD has anything to do with your Vista box not being able
> to see CIFS hosts.  The problem is almost certainly on your Vista box
> (as all the others work).  Did you try just turning off your firewall?
>
> I don't think this is a Samba problem.
>
>   
Thanks Adam for your reply...  yes I have tried turning off the 
firewall(s). It is interesting that you should ask about firewalls 
though, initially when I got this laptop there were two firewalls 
running on it, Windows, and Nortons...(Guess HP wanted to make doubly 
sure my laptop would be safe when they sent it to me.... LOL)  Took me 
awhile to track that issue down, but once I discovered Nortons was 
running and blocking all network traffic I turned it off. That allowed 
all the other computers on my home network to start seeing my Vista 
laptop, but not vice versa...

I now have another clue to add in, I took my laptop in to work and there 
it discovered all the other computers on the network. (made no changes 
to firewall settings and left it running) But none of the computers at 
work are running with Linux, just Windows mostly XP. And another 
oddity... When my laptop was at work, it apparently used a number of 
different discovery methods including NetBios which is what I think 
should be the one to use for discovering other computers on my home 
network... not sure about that, I am new to all this, so my depth of 
understanding is not all that deep... At home the only network discovery 
method that Vista seems to use is WSD which I think stands for Web 
Services for Devices what ever that is...

I sort of think that you are possibly right though - that Samba is not 
the source of this problem, and from the tone of your reply I gather 
that other folks running Vista and Samba/Linux have no problems seeing 
Samba shares from the Vista computer? So that points to the HP 
laptop/Vista.. It is odd though that all my other computers at home can 
see each other just fine, and see the Vista laptop, but the Vista laptop 
cannot see them... I am about to install SuSE on the laptop an see if it 
sees the other computers but that is not much of a test for Vista....

   Marc...