Windows shares no longer accessible

[e_james]

I have been neglecting ubuntu lately while I tried to reduce my work backlog in Windows. I wanted to try a test a few minutes ago requiring access to Windows shares from my laptop running Ubuntu 7.04 but I find that the shares are no longer accessible.

I have 3 desktop PCs running Windows XP Pro and the laptop is dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu. They are connected by my home network and all have some shared drives while running Windows. I used to be able to access all the shares from ubuntu and I have symbolic links on the ubuntu desktop to prove it.

I am wondering if some recent ubuntu update has changed a significant setting so that either ubuntu needs me to take some extra step, or something in the other PCs or the network dislikes the updated ubuntu.

I recently got similar behaviour on another home network with a fresh installation of 7.10 and the live dvd of 8.04 but I thought that was probably because I missed something in the setup.

Any suggestions?

[jonandrews]

There are significant changes to networking between Ubuntu versions, but I've never had a problem with updates, which I have been looking out for.

I've put an illustrated guide to integrating Ubuntu PC's into a Windows home network onto a website:

www.europe.eclipse.co.uk/Ubuntu/

[e_james]

Thanks for the pointer. One of my problems with linux is that I forget procedures and solutions when I only use them occasionally. I will add your site to my bookmarks. Curiously, when I went back to try to access the Windows shares again, everything was working as I would normally expect. As far as I know I did nothing significant. (I had a small problem with network performance and have now established that it is most likely external to the laptop.)

There are a couple of ways you might expand your explanations which would be helpful to me and probably others.

1. What are the consequences of mixing workgroup names?

2. One of my PCs has about 3.5TB of hard drive capacity spread over 10 partitions on 5 drives. 9 of these partitions are entirely data. For this reason the entire partition is shared. If I converted the PC to running linux most of the time, what would you suggest as a partition sharing / mounting strategy? Is there anything I might do which is a particularly good idea or a particularly bad idea?

[e_james]

I'm getting error messages and managed to repeat my post.
Apparently I can't delete a repeated post but I can edit it like this. Almost everything I've done today has not gone according to plan.