Finding my Network Shares on SMB1 Drives after the Windows 10 2004 Update

Hosts File

This is a "lookup" that the OS grabs at startup and uses to map domains to IP addresses quickly.

So first off, set your NAS to a static IP LAN address - that'll be up to you to do as it's specific to each router, I can't help you with that unless you have exactly the same router I do (TalkTalk SuperRouter, a badged Huawei HG635 I believe).

1) WINKEY, then type "notepad" - right click and select "Run as Administrator"
2) Accept UAC
3) Open the file "%systemRoot%\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts" 
4) Add your mapping: "192.168.0.11 \\SGNAS #Seagate BlackArmour 16TB" is mine:
      IP first, then at least one space 
      Domain next, I use the \\ prefix but I'm not sure it's needed. (If it ain't broke ...) 
      Anything after "#" is a comment.
5) Save the file and close Notepad.

Regedit

Despite having \\SGNAS in my Hosts file, my desktop is fine, but my Surface keeps losing SMB1 devices completely, via IP or domain name.
This was getting frustrating ...

Then I found this - ProviderFlags ([Samba] Re: msdfs root problems even after a reboot? and it seems to be working so far:

1) Open Regedit and accept UAC.
2) Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Network
   You should see a list of mapped drives as individual twigs:
       A
       B
       M
       P
       S
       V
       W
       X
3) Open each drive twig and add a new DWORD32 Key named "ProviderFlags".
3.1) Set the value to 1 (you can just press ENTER to open the edit box once it's highlighted)
4) Reboot.

Points of Interest

With the domain / IP mapped in Hosts and the regedit mod, all seems fine and indeed considerably faster than it was before the 2004 upgrade!

History

• 23^rd August, 2020: First version
• 23^rd August, 2020: Removed <code> ... </code> from blocked text.
• 24^th August, 2020: Added images