Fully updated Arch install, running Xfce. I don't use Samba very much, but need it for access at various times, so I have gvfs, gvfs-smb and smbclient installed. Normally no problem accessing Samba shares from Thunar. However.... Recently I spent some time trying to work out why a client was unable to access Samba shares from an Xubuntu desktop machine (shares are on an Ubuntu 16.04 server). While I was testing, I did something (wish I knew what...) and ended up with Thunar suddenly being unable to access any Samba share, even though I could use mount.cifs to mount the same share. When I got back to my home network, I found similar problems, even though I'd never had any problems in that area with this install of Arch. At the same time, another Arch install on the same laptop had no problems accessing the shares, and my desktop machine was also still able to access the shares without any problems. The problem is strange and very variable. Sometimes it fails as soon as I click "browse network" - the system sits and then comes back with 'unable to access "/" timeout was reached'. Sometimes I get a display of the Windows network icon, then it fails to open the Windows network display. Other times, I am able to see and mount a share on the network. This is on the same network, with no changes made to the network (one Slackware-based server, one Ubuntu 16.04 server). And a network which other Arch installs have no problems accessing the shares. I've checked messages using journalctl and dmesg and see nothing when the access fails. The part I find really puzzling is that sometimes it works with any problems, other times it fails as soon as I start. I'm confident that the prolbem is not Thunar itself. I installed pcmanfm to see if a different file manager would behave differently, but it shows exactly the same problem - sometimes it works, other times it fails. I'm at a loss as to how I track this error. I'd really like to fix it, so I'm hoping someone can suggest what might cause the problem, and how to fix it? I've seen problems like this in the past (mainly on Debian based distros, though a few years ago on an Arch install). One of a very small number of problems I've never been able to predictably fix. Paul.