SMB Woes between windows and MacOS

[SpyderTracks]

Hi all

So I have a MBP with Sonoma 14.3.1

Have always had this issue with Sonoma.

I know SMB has always been problematic on MacOS but does seem worse than I’ve had previously on an old MBP that was on OS12 I think.

I’ve got a windows 11 server running as my SMB host. For testing I’ve forced it to use SMB 2 in case it was specifically an issue with SMB 3 but same issues.

Symptoms are that if the windows host is clean booted, I can connect fine to the server from finder using the IP address, and no issues with file transfers. After perhaps a day or two, finder will fail to find the server on the network until I reboot the windows server. I’m connecting using the local windows account credentials. All I use it for is transferring media files over the local network.

Any other devices on the network are still able to see the SMB host, so it’s definitely an issue at the Mac side.

I’ve read reports that SMB 1 can have better results on Mac but due to the security issues this is not something I’m willing to implement.

Just wondering if anyone knows any good workarounds? I’ve tried restarting the SMB service on the Mac but that doesn’t fix it.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Worth adding, it's not just SMB actually, when SMB fails to connect, I lose RDP connectivity from the Mac also.

So it is the Mac failing to see the Host on the network.

 

[Scott]

I've no experience with using a Mac with relation to SMB but I have had very similar issues in the past. The solution was SMB1 for me. That's definitely not recommended and I'm not suggesting you implement as a solution, but I would give it a go just to see if it clears the issue.

Even switching from SMB protocol would tend to work for me at times, rather than rebooting. Again, not a solution.... but just worth a try to save a reboot.

 

[SpyderTracks]

So I'm not entirely certain what's improved this, but this does seem to be more stable now.

We recently (January or so) replaced the custom Asus router and google wifi points to a new EE router and Mesh points. In that I had assigned a static address to my Plex Server. I wondered if there was something funky happening there, so fully added this static IP to the Plex Server itself rather than only in the EE router settings.

As far as I can remember that's the only change I made, but over the last 3 weeks or so, this has been far more reliable. There are times where the Plex Server is still unreachable from the Mac, but it now comes back without having to reboot the Plex Server.

There was also an update to MacOS to 14.3.1 and I wonder if that fixed something.

 

[TonyCarter]

There was also an update to MacOS to 14.3.1 and I wonder if that fixed something.

MacOS 14.4 was pushed out a few days ago...you'll get some new emojis for the huge update size (and long update).

 

[SpyderTracks]

MacOS 14.4 was pushed out a few days ago...you'll get some new emojis for the huge update size (and long update).

Just applied it this morning, was a LONG install!

Reading what's been updated there were loads of firmware updates both for apple silicon and the T2 chips, so wonder if that's why it took so long to complete.

 

[TonyCarter]

Probably part of their anti-quantum cryptography cracking efforts.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Probably part of their anti-quantum cryptography cracking efforts.

I think they're quite heavily pushing passkeys, as Microsoft are pushing password less logons, sure google are too. It is proving effective from what I'm hearing, and if my old suspicions were correct, I think a lot of major sites will drop standard password support within the next year or two.