My Book NAS says network link down, Windows Explorer can’t reach

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[jdunham]

I have a WD My Book Live NAS on my home network.  From any computer on the network I can reach its dashboard and run diagnostics (which it passes).  None of my computers can see it in Windows Explorer, returning: “The specified network name is no longer available.”  This NAS is our file server, so losing contact with it is a serious problem.  Recent problems with backups means my backups aren’t current.

Here’s my system:

AT&T router connected by Cat5e to Netgear GigE switch.

Connected by wire to switch are:

Two Lenovo desktops running Windows 10 Pro, one are 1903 and one at 1909.  (Yes, I’ve re-enabled SMBv1.)

One antique Dell notebook running Windows XP Pro, only used to manage backups.

One WD My Cloud NAS that contains backups, currently working okay.

One WD My Book Live NAS serving as our file server, currently not working okay.

All are assigned to the same workgroup.

I can bring up the My Book’s dashboard on any of the three computers without a problem, which says it must be connected.  I can also ping it.  The router lists it and does not indicate an error.  The IP address is acquired by DHCP, but has not changed.  It has no problem sending me e-mail to tell me the link is down.

BUT

On all three machines Windows Explorer says it is no longer available.  The dashboard for the device reports that the network link is down.  “This PC” lists it as a network location, but with a big red “X”.

I’ve tried rebooting the NAS from the dashboard.  I’ve tried resetting it with the physical reset button.  I’ve tried replacing the Ethernet cable.  I’ve tried plugging it into a different switch.  I’ve tried resetting the TCP/IP stack.  No joy.  I’ve now exceeded my limited knowledge.

Suggestions are solicited.  Thanks!

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

• This topic was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by jdunham. Reason: Added that e-mail is working

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Jerry,

I’ve had similar problems with File Explorer not want to enumerate my MyBookLive.

I’ve found that renabling SMBv1 in Windows Optional Features solves the problem.

I’m not worried much about using SMBv1 on my local LAN as I don’t do dicey things with my computers.

If you don’t want to use SMBv1 you can just type \\MyBookLive into the File Explorer address bar and it should find it.

BTW: Not having SMBv1 installed breaks other things in windows as well.

HTH 😎

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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All three of my Windows computers already have SMBv1 active, but it doesn’t help.  Something else is going on.  And typing \\MyBookLive into Windows Explorer doesn’t get there, either.

Thanks for trying.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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\\MyBookLive is the name of the NAS server.
What is the sharepoint on the server that you have access to?
Example: \\MyBookLive\MyDocuments.
Or: \\192.168.1.50\MyDocuments (where 192.168.1.50 is the IP address of the NAS)

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\\192.168.1.79\Public fares no better.   🙁   I don’t have any share set up other than the defaults.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

All three of my Windows computers already have SMBv1 active, but it doesn’t help.  Something else is going on.  And typing \\MyBookLive into Windows Explorer doesn’t get there, either.

Thanks for trying.

Try by using the IP address.

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Using the IP address gets me to the dashboard, but not to my data.   🙁

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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[RetiredGeek]

Jerry, have you checked the permissions on the NAS in the AD interface to make sure they haven’t become corrupted? You might try deleting them all and then adding them back one at a time.

HTH 😎

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by RetiredGeek.

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I hope I’m understanding this correctly.  “AD” means “Active Director” to me but that doesn’t apply to my workgroup-based home network.  I’m assuming you mean the WD dashboard.

In the dashboard the only permissions I see are under Users, Share Access, and I have that set to full access for all shares.

Or did you mean something else?

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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Sorry, that was supposed to be WD. Darn spell check!

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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🙂

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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Sounds like an CIFS/SMB server/port issue on the NAS itself. Communication from client devices to the NAS’s web server (which provides its ‘dashboard’) apparently still works so HTTP/HTTPS is working on ports 80 and/or 443 (sorry, I have no experience of the WD My Book Live NAS so I have no idea which protocol it uses).

CIFS/SMB communication on ports 137/138 (UDP), 139 (TCP) and/or 445 (TCP) appears to have stopped. I doubt this could fail on *all* client devices at the same time unless using the same third-party firewall/antimalware solution on all client devices and a bad definition update was delivered.

A quick check on each client device would be to open an elevated command prompt and enter:

netstat -ab > C:\ports.txt

Then check each ‘ports.txt’ file (using CTRL+F and searching for :445 to show the state of port 445). At the very least port 445 should be in a LISTENING state.

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Working from my primary Windows 10 computer I see these ports are in listening mode:

80, 443, 445, 139, 135

Listed, but not listening is:

137, 138 (UDP)

I’m not sure what to do with this information.  This is a list for the computer, not the NAS, so what’s happening on the other (NAS) end?

Thanks for the suggestion.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

I’m not sure what to do with this information. This is a list for the computer, not the NAS, so what’s happening on the other (NAS) end?

It just means that the problem doesn’t appear to be the *ports* used for file access on the Windows clients all suddenly being blocked by, say, a rogue update to a third-party firewall running on them. It was worth checking IMO before looking at other network access issues on the Windows clients (although I think the symptoms point to the NAS).

I’m hampered by not having one of these devices myself so, if you haven’t seen it before, please have a look at this article and try the steps listed. Note that it’s yet another website having problems with backslashes so, in Solution 2, the registry key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation

Hope this helps…

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Sorry I can’t help, but I did want to let you know you aren’t alone. I had similar issues when trying to get MyBookLive working on Windows 10, after zero problems on Win7.

I wasn’t able to get any of WD’s KB information to help with the situation.

I note you had previously posted this on WD’s forum, without posting the crosslink here (as the rules request, so people don’t spend time giving you help that has already been offered elsewhere).
https://community.wd.com/t/my-book-live-nas-says-network-link-down-windows-explorer-can-t-reach-it/251589

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, satrow

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Thanks.  I missed that in the rules.  Here’s where I’ve posted this question:

https://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f138/my-book-nas-says-network-link-down-windows-explorer-can-t-reach-it-1242248.html#post7778612

https://community.wd.com/t/my-book-live-nas-says-network-link-down-windows-explorer-can-t-reach-it/251589

The WD site has never generated any useful responses for me, but I felt I ought to at least post the problem there, given that it’s specifically a WD NAS problem.

Good suggestions occasional come from Tech Support Forum, but not nearly as often as AskWoody.  At least that’s been my experience.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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Here’s a thought.  Is there some way, working from a command line and knowing the IP address, that I might be able to peek inside the NAS to see what ports it’s using?  Or even see my files?  The NAS is actually working, and responds to what I do in the dashboard, but the dashboard gives rather confined access, and is not intended to give direct access to files.

Note that this is not a Windows 10 problem, since my antique XP notebook could see the NAS files last week and came down with the same problem as the Windows 10 machines at the same time.  This is something that has changed within the NAS.

The timing coincided with a storm last Friday.  No, the storm didn’t hit the NAS.  As the storm approached I disconnected both NASes, even though they’re on a UPS with surge protection.  I didn’t restart them until the next morning.  At that time the My Book Live NAS was no longer reachable.  I’ve tried rebooting it since (more than once), but that hasn’t put things right.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

Is there some way, working from a command line and knowing the IP address, that I might be able to peek inside the NAS to see what ports it’s using?

I haven’t used it but this Check If a Remote Network Port Is Open Using Command Line article suggests how it’s done from Win 10, substituting IP address for hostname.

Hope this helps…

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TNC looks interesting.  What ports should I be looking for?  Unsurprisingly, ports 21 & 80 return true.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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Have you logged into the Router to see if the NAS is listed as connected there? Maybe as an unknown device?

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I am logged into the router, and everything there looks normal.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

This is something that has changed within the NAS.

I tend to agree… but normal ‘troubleshooting’ tests all possibilities. I wish I knew whether the WD My Book Live has remote updating in case a rogue WD update has caused the change in behaviour. It does appear though that its CIFS/SMB server (the filesharing side of things) has died or been disabled, leaving just the HTTP(S) ‘dashboard’ reachable.

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Last firmware update was in 2015, and it worked fine until a few days ago.

The NAS does support FTP, though I haven’t used it.  Should I turn that on and give FTP a try?  I haven’t messed with FTP in a couple of decades, but I can relearn if that might give me access to my data.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

Should I turn that on and give FTP a try?

Your choice. Turning on FTP will (should) at least show whether your NAS’ FTP server is available.

However – dare I say it… IMO (S)FTP is now old technology… so I’m not too sure how a working FTP setup helps (nor whether your NAS supports secure FTP).

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The NAS claims to support http://FTP.  The only option is on or off, so I’ve turned it on.  I currently have the admin account set to no password, so I assume that translates to FTP, but FileZilla won’t connect because I’m not giving it a password.  I’m going to add a password and see whether that helps.

If I can at least get in with FTP I have a way to get at my data.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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I’m in!  It’s just FTP, but I can at least see that all of my data is still there and doing fine.  That still doesn’t make this thing usable as an NAS, but as long as I can find room for my data somewhere at least I can retrieve it.

[Breathing sigh of relief]

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

I’m in! It’s just FTP, but I can at least see that all of my data is still there and doing fine.

Yay! Perhaps order (if possible) a backup to this data store?

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I already have an empty 2-bay Synology NAS that I’ve been putting off implementing because of the cost of the drives I’d like to use.  Looks like I need to be ordering drives and emptying the savings account.  I intended to use the Synology for backups, allowing the newer WD NAS (My Cloud) to become my primary file server.  This would allow the My Book Live NAS to retire and major in dust collection.

Still, it sure would make things more convenient for now if I could get SMB working again on the My Book Live.  What ports would it be using for SMB?

Thanks again for all of your help!

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

Last firmware update was in 2015, and it worked fine until a few days ago.

Was this the last firmware update APPLIED to your device in 2015? Or was this the last AVAILABLE update from WD, not applied?

Sorry, just trying to get accurate information on your situation rather than make assumptions about what you mean.

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The NAS itself says:  “Last update: Tue 23 Jun 2015 04:05:58 AM CDT”

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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I would love it if others with more experience of WD NAS’ stepped in… ‘cos I’m very ‘iffy’ about trying to provide (hopefully) helpful advice outside of my own personal experience. (IMO, this is one of the ongoing issues about a generic help forum.)

Google-Foo suggests that your ‘My Book Live’ device may be running ‘My Cloud OS‘, a cut-down flavour of Linux.

jdunham wrote:

The NAS itself says: “Last update: Tue 23 Jun 2015

Sorry but, I’ve reached the limit of what I feel confident about suggesting.

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It is, indeed, running a flavor of Linux, probably “My Cloud OS”.

Thank you for your efforts.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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I’m now fumbling around in FileZilla, trying to figure out how to connect to the NAS through http://FTP.  If anyone here is experienced with FTP I’d appreciate suggestions.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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The cable’s, any Cross-over ones?

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I have a crossover cable in a box somewhere.  What did you have in mind?

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

What ports would it be using for SMB?

139 or 445…

 

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tnc returns true for both.  The problem apparently lies elsewhere.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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jdunham wrote:

tnc returns true for both.

‘tnc’?

Please bear in mind that many people (like me) will have absolutely no idea what ‘tnc’ means.

EDIT: OK, so I looked ‘tnc’ up.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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I didn’t know about tnc until I went to the link you suggested for testing remote ports.   🙂

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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touché…

1 user thanked author for this post.

jdunham

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I found this WD Support link that addresses network discovery problems with WD My Cloud series drives but it should still be pertinent to WD My Book Live series drives (though not addressed in the “applicable to” section probably due to it no longer being supported by WD).

This may be a dumb question but, have you tried resetting the My Book Live’s firmware back to it’s factory defaults, rebooting it, then re-configuring it to your current settings and finally following up with re-mapping it as a network share using this WD Support link supplied by @Kirsty above?

Resetting the drives firmware back to factory defaults generally should not effect any stored data or shares (per WD Support) as it would be akin to updating it’s firmware so it “should” be safe to do.

One last thing I found that might be helpful is flushing the DNS cache which may resolve some network connectivity issues but, in this case, it’s a doubtful fix as you’re having Explorer discovery/connectivity issues on 3 different & separate systems and you still have access to the drive’s UI & FTP via it’s IP address.

Win7 - PRO & Ultimate, x64 & x86
Win8.1 - PRO, x64 & x86
Groups A, B & ABS

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I think I tried pertnear all of those things early in this tale of woe.  I started out with a visit to WD Support before I posted to AskWoody.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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FTP works in Windows Explorer.
In the address bar type ftp://user:password@192.168.1.79\Public

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

jdunham

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I knew that in the far distant past, but it sure didn’t come back to mind during my search for solutions to this problem.  Thank you for rebooting some of my aging grey cells.

This doesn’t fix the original problem of Samba not working on the NAS, but it will certainly make getting my files off easier.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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For anyone interested in this thread, here’s the current status:

I’m giving up on my fileserver (My Book Live).  It has two problems: Samba is no longer working, and even if it were something changed in Windows 10 that has made it too slow to be useful.  Once I have my network architecture sorted out I’ll use FTP to recover my data.

I have a Synology DS218j, and just today received two 4GB WD UltraStor drives for it.  This will give me 4GB of mirrored storage, originally intended to house my backups.

The issue is that my current backup server (3TB WD My Cloud NAS) should become my file server.  It’s certainly large enough for my current purposes, but it has the same slowdown problem with Win 10 for large transfers, making it difficult to back up.  I think I may be stuck with using FTP to access it from my Windows 10 machine or use my antique XP notebook, which is limited by its 10/100 NIC, but otherwise works fine with the NAS.

Or perhaps I should just give up on the second (My Cloud) NAS, put my data on the new Synology NAS and use it as a file server, while saving money for a different backup solution.  This is getting expensive for an olde fart on Social Security.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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Let us know how the Synology performs and we can make suggestions about how to proceed.

cheers, Paul

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Reporting back as requested.

It took quite awhile, but I got all of my data, at least all I cared about, off of the My Book Live NAS using FTP and onto a 1 TB USB 2 hard drive that I had been using for my e-mail, after moving my e-mail to a USB flash “drive”.

I spent quite a few hours reading up on what the Synology NAS could do and how to set it up.  It’s far more complex and capable than the My Book Live, and I’ll likely never use 90% of what it can do.

I then formatted it, built a drive pool using Synology Hybrid RAID, and installed a volume on it.

I then plugged the USB hard drive into the back of the Synology NAS and initiated what Synology calls “USB Copy”.  About 11 hours later I was back in business with a file server containing all of our regularly used files, and mapped drives on both my machine and my wife’s.  I then set up a separate directory for the images I keep for each of our machines and moved those to the NAS.

Note:  Loading the NAS probably wouldn’t have taken 11 hours if my old USB hard drive used USB 3.0, but it’s what I had.  The Synology NAS speaks 3.0.

The My Book Live is now a paperweight, but it’s “special” because it’s a paperweight with a blinking light.   🙂

At this point I’m quite happy with this Synology DS218j.  It does a lot for the price.  My one complaint is that there’s no way to see the directory structure of the USB hard drive when it’s plugged into the NAS.  It works well, but you’re flying blind, unless there’s an add-on package that I don’t know about.

I want to thank the members of this forum for all of the help.  It’s nice to know there are people much smarter than me who are willing to take the time to assist.

Jerry Dunham
Co-founder, Coonhound and Foxhound Companions
Founder, Tejas Coonhound Rescue

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