Why have I have lost access to my music library on both Sonos S1 and S2 products?

I hope you are kidding!  I didn’t buy Sonos speakers because I am a computer expert (though I am pretty efficient, having, more or less, kept up since the early days of IBM PC).  I just want to play my music through my expensive speakers, without hassle, as I have done for the last two years.

Computer Expert? - well, I’m certainly no Windows expert myself either, but @press250’s step-by-step guide (with pictures) couldn’t be any simpler. It’s nothing my young grandson couldn’t sort and personally speaking, it seems simple enough to me, but it’s each to their own, I guess.

I can’t see how it would be any more difficult than setting up an SMBv1 shared library. I use a NAS box myself and that can be far more difficult than anything outlined by the user @press250. If you’re struggling with it though, then maybe find a mate/colleague that can perhaps sort it for you. 

Thanks for the link to the file sharing guide. Unfortunately, and correct me if I am wrong, I think it only applies to creating a share on a computer that is on at the time you want to access the shared folder and not to shares on network attached storage. For clarity, I am using a NAS drive that is configured to use SMBv2 to store my music library and it is this drive and shared folder that the Sonos Windows desktop controller will not allow me to access. I will be taking this up with Sonos support next week and will post anything I find out. Thanks everyone.

I’m using SMBv2 for my NAS shared library and that’s working okay, but in my case the library share has been setup a long time ago.. do the steps, in the below link, not work for you to setup the NAS share….

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/use-a-nas-drive-with-sonos

Thanks for this. These are the steps that I followed and everything works fine until the last step. After entering the path to the music library share on my NAS drive and clicking next, the controller spends about 5 minutes or so “thinking” before returning the “path is no longer available” error. I checked that the shared music library folder is accessible through Windows File Explorer when I get the error message in the Sonos controller app so I’m not sure why the Sonos app is having trouble finding the music files.

Is the network profile for your PC set to ‘Private’ rather than ‘Public’ see this link…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/configure-windows-10-network-and-security-settings

Hi, not sure I understand how music on my Mac is a security risk…? Apologies for my ignorance!!!

See the link included in my post or do a search on SMB vulnerabilities and you may see the risks associated with the sharing protocol.

I checked network settings as per the suggestion above; my network is private and there was an entry to allow Sonos through the firewall. There were two entries for the Sonos controller and nothing for the Sonos library service. I uninstalled and reinstalled the most recent version of the Sonos controller and let it configure the firewall settings. For some reason, the list of allowed apps now has 2 Sonos controllers, 2 SonosLibraryServices and 1 Sonos Desktop controller. They are all checked off under the Private column in the firewall settings. I was still getting the same error. I tried creating a new share on the root of my NAS and copied my music library files to that share. When I try to add that path in my Sonos music library settings, I get the aforementioned path “is no longer available” error almost immediately. I have tried tweaking the SMB settings in my NAS (allow SMB signing, force SMB2, allow SMB1 or SMB2), all to no avail. I still have full access to all my music library files through Windows File Explorer. I am at a loss.

I believe the Sonos Library Service is an http share, both that protocol and the SMBv1 protocol, are not viewable by the new Sonos App, but both should work for you using the desktop controller, once you have setup the share and indexed the library.