Making Windows 7 and Vista play nice with SAMBA

If Windows 7 and Vista won’t work “properly” with your SAMBA servers, give this a try:

1. Create a new Group Policy Object in GPMC, and give it a name. I chose “Samba Compatibility”.
2. Edit the GPO…
3. Navigate to : Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > Network Security
4. Now edit the setting “Network security: LAN Manager Authentication level”, and change it to “Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated”.
5. Apply that GPO to the appropriate OU, and you’re away* 🙂

• People will probably need to reboot for the changes to take effect.

Key symptoms we saw were Vista/Win7 rejecting the initial connection, prompting for a username and password, then rejecting the domain credentials you just entered. This fixes those issues!