ES file explorer cannot find server

Hi there. I'm tearing my hair out with this.

As the threat title suggests, I cannot find the server via as file explorer. What makes this frustrating is that the server is the default gateway as I have a USB device plugged into my router, and my nexus 10 uses this gateway to access the internet.

File explorer can see other devices on the network, and other devices on the network can see the server files, so I don't know where I'm going wrong. Also, this is a new problem. I used to be able to see the files fine up until a few days ago. The timing was similar to the upgrading of android 4.2.2 but I don't know if this is related.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Yes, but I'm afraid that comes to nothing.

 

Phil, I won't lie: I don't know what a lot of that means. But surely if the tablet can access the internet via the router then there is no problem in communication between the two, no?

 

Thanks Phil for your reply.

I'm afraid I'm getting nowhere with this.

I downloaded the app you recommended and pinged the router with out any trouble. And I have looked as hard as I can on the internet to see whet the problem is, without luck.

I've tried to access the router's USB drive on other devices, and have found I am able to do so on my iPad, but not my nexus 4 or 10. I am able to see other network devices from my nexus and I have the same trouble using the nexus using other network apps. This has led me to conclude the problem is with the nexus, not the router, apps, or USB drive. This would make sense as the problem started when I updated system software to android 4.2.2.

Do you have any idea how this can be remedied?

Thanks again.

 

@Phil42,

I have done a bit more work on this.

I plugged in a USB stick instead of the drive to see if this was the problem and still nothing. Other devices on the network were able to see the files on the stick, however. This has led me to conclude that the problem is definitely with Android and these devices accessing samba servers.

I installed AmdSMB and tried to access this way. Again, no luck, but the error I'm getting from this app is:

smb://yourserver:445/ java.net.UnknownHostException: yourserver
PWD
smb://yourserver:445/ java.net.UnknownHostException: yourserver

Does anyone know what this means?

Also, I have tried static IP and this does nothing.

Any help would be HUGELY appreciated.

Thanks, all. And happy new year!