My MyBookLive shows up under Network in Windows Explorer however it cannot be accessed by name, only by IP. This is occurring on 3 different devices (all Win 10). If I try to access it by name it says Windows can’t access it, check the name otherwise there may be a problem with my network. Connecting via IP works just fine (well on 2 of the 3 PCs, but I’ll deal with the 3rd in a different post), it’s just annoying to have to type in the IP each time instead of just clicking the name in the list of devices.
Easy fix, I renamed it and it worked, then named it back and it still works. Interestingly, it now shows in Network both by name and IP.
It can mean that you don’t have a clear active WINS server available on your network to deal with the identification. If you can add one, or give one explicit master priority then that kind of issue should resolve itself. It’s the WINS server that does the resolution for Windows networking.
How do you do that with the WINS server? I don’t have anything special setup/enabled, just using Windows 10 default settings and letting Win auto-discover the NAS. After a little bit of time, it stopped showing by IP address under Network and only shows by name
This morning it’s having more issues:
-on one PC I can see “MYBOOKLIVE” under Network, but can’t connect to it. Works fine by IP
-on a 2nd PC, I can connect to the root of the NAS but can’t access either of the shares. Gives an error about not having access (even though both are public). Again works fine by IP.
I once again renamed it and it was working again, renamed it back and stopped working (on both PCs). Renamed it to the new name again, back to working. I’ll just stick with the new name I guess and hope it keeps working! But I would like more info on the WINS server if that’s something built into Windows I can change in case that’s the root cause.
It should be built into Windows (look under the TCP/IP protocol part of your network adaptor configuration). I don’t have Windows 10 so I can’t be more specific, but the aim is to raise it’s priority or make it a master.
Basically how it works is that if there are multiple machines with shares on the network, there needs to be a centralised server to keep track of them (who is where and how to access them). That is the WINS server’s job, and any of the machines can do the job. However as they all by default have the same priority level they hold an election to see who gets the job, and by the time that’s all resolved the original request can have timed out. Hence by raising the priority or making it a master you’re forcing your machine to do the job.
In my case I have a Raspberry Pi on my network for doing all sorts of little server tasks, and this is one of them. I think I’ve seen some settings on my NAS box too (a MyCloud Mirror in my case) - look under the networking configuration on your MBL. On my MCM it’s labelled as Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) and is used on the newer versions of Windows.
