Windows Networking Still so clunky, big disk problems with Windows Server and 5GHz WiFi DFS Problems

Man, I don’t use Windows too much any more, but somehow I would have thought that simple things like discovery in a home network would be fixed by now. With a Mac, it is trivial to discover a server with something claleedd Bonjour (or mDNS Responder) for power nerds. This basically has each peer in the network broadcasts where it is.

This still does not work with Windows. It can see the Synology server, but it only sees it as a network device. it does not recognize the SMB server notifications.

The only solution is that you have to know the network address and type it in as \\servername into the File Explorer. But at least you can see the names. The second issue is that if you have a network password don’t hit enter too fast because if you do not enter the right network password, it will remember it and never present the dialog again. Sigh.

The second issue is that with the Unifi, it has an AI function and moves the 5G networking to so called DFS bands. These are ones where there is potential for conflict. The 5GHz driver does not handle “non standard channels” so they do appear. There is no way to know this.

Of course the Apple devices seem to work just fine with DFS frequencies, so if you Apple devices see the network and your PCs don’t, see if you have network that is using these DFS Channels.

The final nightmare is from a buddy who has a 16TB drives, these work fine in Windows Pro, but are not recognized by Windows Server. 8TB drives work fine, but not the 16TB ones. Weird. Argh!!!! Even though it’s supposed to work fine up to 256TB

I’m Rich & Co.

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