I have a friend with an office in his house that has been using a box with win2k pro as an in-house file server for quite a while and with literally zero problems the entire time since I made that for him.
Its h/w was updated a couple of years ago and it just keeps going fine - and I will be replacing it with a Linux box sometime in the future for him.
There is just him, a secretary & a part-time assistant, a total of 3 other PCs that share files via the server (which is not accessible via internet at all).
I just replaced his desktop PC with an Ubuntu Mate 18.04 box that also has a VM of his previous XP system for his specialised s/w to stay in use & most everything is fine, but...:
Samba refuses to play nice with the shared stuff on the win2k pro server.
With or without credentials it will not gain access - though the windows network is visible to it, and it uses the 2 windows network shared printers, the Samba logging in fails every time such that he has no more direct access at his PC to his own files while using the host OS.
What is really puzzling about this happened when the VM of XP fired up & already had ALL of his shares from the server active & perfectly accessible with zero hesitation.
All the network protocols are active on the win2k box & I've tried every Samba trick that I have been able to find via searching without any success.
I also looked around here & followed the suggestions before posting this query=>
And:
I have not yet had the chance to try every single suggestion made in those 2 replies, but I will try more ASAP to get this to work.
In the meantime:
I am hoping that someone else here has run into this problem & has some sort of a definite workaround for it ??
Simply replacing the win2k box will be my best option, I know - but sadly ATM my biggest problem is in getting there again anytime soon - as I am over 100 miles away with no car at present, so I need to do what I can via remote, if possible.
Thanks for any helpful pointers !!