How To See Raspberry Pi On Windows Network
If you are reading this it is probably because you are having trouble getting a Windows system to see a Samba share on your Raspberry Pi. There can be a number of reasons for this. We’re going to cover some of the issues you might run into.
We’re going to cover the following:
- How to setup Samba
- Fixes for issues
How To Setup Samba On A Raspberry Pi
Before we start talking about things that can go wrong let’s start by going over some of the basic steps to get Samba working on a Raspberry Pi with Linux. Make sure you have Samba setup before trying to connect from Windows.
We start out by making sure the packages are installed:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install samba samba-common-bin
Edit your Samba config file:
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
The config will look something like this:
[global]
netbios name = Pi
server string = The Pi File Center
workgroup = WORKGROUP
[MYHOME]
path = /home/pi
comment = a home directory
writeable=Yes
create mask=0777
directory mask=0777
public=no
Create a Samba password for whichever user you will be using:
sudo smbpasswd -a pi
Restart Samba to enable changes to the config file:
sudo service smbd restart
From Windows
From Windows you can access the share through File Explorer:
- Open Windows File Explorer
- Click on Network
- Click on your Raspberry Pi
Fixes for Issues Seeing a Raspberry Pi on a Windows Network
You may be able to connect to your share by typing it into the URL bar but it doesn’t show up under Networks.
One common issue that comes up is that the old SMB1 network discovery system has apparently been deprecated by Microsoft. There are two things you can try to fix this.
- From your Windows box, enable SMB1 support
- Install a WSDD daemon as mentioned in This Thread
Tips / Things To Check - How To See Raspberry Pi On Windows Network
- Make sure that both systems are on the same network.
- Make sure that the Samba daemon is actually running.
- Check that you don’t have a firewall blocking connectivity between your Raspberry Pi and your Windows machine. This could be a firewall on the Windows host, the Raspberry Pi, or the network.
- You might want to make sure that you are running the most recent version of Rasbian or the most recent version of whatever distro you are using.
- On your Windows Machine, make sure that network discovery is turned on:
- Network and Sharing Center > Advanced sharing settings
- Set Network discovery to “Turn on network discovery”
- Some people have mentioned setting up a WINS server. This could potentially help out with some issues.
- Can you reach the share from a different machine on the network? Something other than the Windows host you are having trouble with? Try acessing the share from another Linux or OSX host. If it works the issue is likely with your Windows host and not the Raspberry Pi Samba server or network.
References