REPASSAC - 7 minutes ago »
A few questions:
What was the sequence of starting the PC and from what state (Sleep, Hibernate, power down)?
Which was started first PC or FVP-4000T? Restarting Samba would cause it to rebroadcast it's presence.
Did you try refreshing the network drive (F5)?
Samba is a well known widely used server with a GNU General Public License - all Humax would have done is to compile the source.
I have several devices on my network with SMB/CIFS servers: NAS boxes, internet radios etc and they all work well so it's definitely the Humax implementation which is dodgy. Over the last month I have tried every possible combination of booting, re-booting, refreshing, registry edits on my PC (Vista Home Premium) and two laptops (Vista Business and W10) and even an Ubuntu 15 box which was better than Windows but still flaky.
After further experimentation this morning with the Humax shares turned on these are the Folders which can be mapped as Windows drives(exact spelling required):
\\IP\Recordings
\\IP\Download
\\IP\Music
\\IP\Video
\\IP\Photo
The path given in the Humax settings of /mnt/hd2/Media/Download appears to be of no use to Windows users.
The problem with the Humax configuration is that Music, Video and Photo and locked and will not accept uploads so all uploads (music, video or photo files or folders) have to be copied to the Downloads folder which makes it look like a mess.
Once you go into the Humax Media menu you can select between Video, Photo or Music but the files do not seem to be physically moved to the appropriate folder although they do appear and play in the correct location onscreen. The quality of playback or display is very good.
The one slight issue I have is that in the Recordings mapped drive all the files appear as .mpeg-ts, even those recorded in SD. I can drag and drop them to the PC but they won't play until I convert them to a more common .mpg format. I have a comprehensive Codec pack installed but I might be able to update that later and see if a more recent version of ffmpeg will play them. However, I will still need to convert them for playback on our Android tablets.
Any advice about why my Humax is not converting to .mpg on-the-fly would be appreciated.
Richard
Just seen your advice about private networks and discovery but I'm sure you have worked out that I'm a reasonably advanced user with a Gigabit LAN and a 802.11n wifi networks throughout the house so if this were a "normal" Windows problem I would have quickly sorted it. 
