Can't access a NAS device through a VPN connection in a Windows device.

Question

Can't access a NAS device through a VPN connection in a Windows device.

Martí Carrasco Guitart 0

Hello everyone, I have a VPN set through WireGuard on my local network, along with a NAS that works via SMB. When I'm out of the local network and I want to connect to the NAS, I would have to activate the VPN to be able to access the local network and connect to it, but it doesn't work for me on Windows. I have tried it from a Samsung phone and it connects successfully to the NAS, and it also works from a Mac, but on Windows, when I try to connect to the VPN from outside my local network, there are no devices appearing in the “network” tab of the Windows browser. I've tried to disable the Firewall, but it doesn't work either.

It should be noted that with the VPN activated, I can surf the internet perfectly.

What do I have to do so that I can connect to the NAS from Windows?

3 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Hello Martí Carrasco Guitart,

Thanks for posting here.

As per your statement, the whole set is secured and connected through the VPN deployed with WireGuard, while it`s available on your mobile and Mac but not Windows. Free feel to correct if my understanding might be incorrected.

Due to the NAS may be using CIFS / SMB 1.0 and is disabled by default in Windows 10 for it is less secure than newer versions of SMB.

You can try the following steps to see if it helps:

Open Control Panel, click Programs and then find "Turn Windows features on or off" and click it.

As shown in the picture below, if your SMB1.0/CIFS file share support is not enabled yet, you can try checking it to enable it.

Then, restart your computer, and if possible, try to connect / map to the NAS drive again.

I hope this can help you.

If you have already tried this, please reply, and let us know and we would be happy to provide some different suggestions!

Best Regards,

Shujun

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Answer 2

Limitless Technology 44,776

Hello there,

Most common issue I see when trying to access a drive over a VPN is if the drive is set by name instead of IP address and the DNS server is not set up for the VPN addresses. Second most common is that the VPN VLAN does not have access to the VLAN the server\NAS is on.

Have you tried split tunneling ?

VPN split tunneling is a feature that enables users to use two different networks for traffic instead of having all the traffic routed through a VPN. Windows has supported this feature for native applications, and VPN split tunneling is also offered for Microsoft 365 applications over VPN split tunneling on Windows. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-vpn-split-tunneling

Hope this resolves your Query !!

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Martí Carrasco Guitart 0 Reputation points

2023-10-09T13:30:14.1633333+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for your answer, but how would you explain the fact that there is access to the NAS through the VPN with my phone, but not with the PC? And what would be the most successful solution? And is split tunneling compatible with the Windows explorer?

Answer 3

Hello,

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

Here I will provide some troubleshooting steps from Windows aspects:

Check Windows SMB Client configuration:

Run Get-smbclientconfiguration on Windows machine and get the output.

Try to ping and telnet NAS IP and see if the network connection is working.
Capture network trace by wireshark/network monitor when trying to connect to NAS device and check the traffic flow.

Hope this answer can help you well.

Best Regards,

Shujun

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Can't access a NAS device through a VPN connection in a Windows device.

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