We have several Windows-based file shares and one computer can't connect to them. By default, he should be able to use smb://server.name/share from Finder > Go > Connect to Server... and then get prompted for his username and password, but instead he gets an error almost immediately that says:

There was a problem connecting to the server "server.name".


Here's what we've tried so far in our troubleshooting:

  • Tried restarting the computer
  • Changed the server name to use the IP instead. No change in behavior
  • Confirmed that the server name and IP can be pinged
  • Tried using cifs:// instead of smb://. No change in behavior
  • Confirmed there aren't any saved credentials in Keychain Access that could be outdated
  • Confirmed we get the same error when trying to connect to different servers with different shares and using different accounts

I solved a similar problem on my computer a while ago. I created a file /etc/nsmb.conf with the following contents:


Be aware that you disable some security features with this procedure. You can find more details in an apple support article.

  • What a great resource to pass along! I was really hopeful this would solve the problem, but alas the issue persists. – bmkaiser Jul 24 '18 at 14:31

Found the answer here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/262136/296316

Person had the Android development tools installed and so this was affecting their access to SMB shares. Removing the com.intel.kext.intelhaxm kext resolved the issue.

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