Windows 10 File Sharing - How to Access the Share - DO NOT USE A PIN!

So, you have created a share on your Windows 10 machine and want to access it from another (Windows 10) computer.

Here is a big trap laid out by Microsoft: if you use a Microsoft account and a PIN to log into the sharing computer, this will never work!

You have to disable the PIN login before you can use the username and password to log into the samba share you created.

Or, you can switch to a local account and keep the PIN.

I like the latter solution better.

It took me ages to figure that out and I hope this short post saves you valuable time.

 

Note: if you are using a Microsoft account on the sharing computer, you can use the MS username (e. g. xxx@live.com) or the user name known in the OS itself - both will work, no prefix is required.

Note 2: even if you are using the same Microsoft account on both computers, Windows will treat them as separate accounts. You will be asked for your username and password when connecting to the share.

Note 3: you can use Credential Manager to set up combinations of machine/username/password to avoid being asked for credentials every time.

Streamin Audio Books on Spotify

This story applies to all streaming services, I guess, but my current one happens to be Spotify.

I had this nice series of books that I wanted to listen to. So I downloaded all three books for offline use and got started.

A couple of weeks later, I was just in cheater two of the third and last volume, the tracks began to jump: it played the first five seconds, then skipped to the next, so I was through the whole book in no time.

The downlods were correct though. So why?

After a while, the first few tracks began to show in gray. And even the tracks I had already successfully played would now skip after a few seconds. Wth?

I tried the same in the browser, where I could not play the book at all.

Contacting support was a mixed experience. They responded quickly, but the answers could have come from "IT Crowd": "Have you tried turning it off and on again?". In this case: uninstall and reinstall the Spotify app. To what avail, if it is failing in the browser too?

I send five message to support, asking specifically, whether the book had been deleted from Spotify, which resulted in all kinds of answers, just not to my question.

The last answer said they could not comment on albums that are removed. If I cannot play it in my region, it probably has been removed from that region. I wonder why such a "policy" exists? Being transparent about it would a beneficial for both sides.

Anyway, the learning is: if you have downloaded offline content that you plan to finish (such as books), turn off your network until you are finished. Otherwise, such "updates" can hit you hard. Of course, staying offline with your phone is not really an option - but you can use a firewall (if you are not on iOS) to keep the Spotify app from connecting to the server and start rendering your offline content useless.

I am not quite sure though, how long the app can stay offline without losing the "license".

I ended up buying the audio book, because I really wanted to get to the end of it.

And from now on, whenever I download a book to listen to later, I take the app off the internet until I am finished.

Crowd-Funding in Germany

 Kaut-Funding, aka adopt-a-German