Disabling SMB2 and SMB3 Client from Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Question

There are many programs that are using a shared file on the server from clients from XP to Windows 10. From time to time it seems like there is a network outage and the handle to the file is broken and the file
cannot be read or updated. It seems more prevalent on a Windows 2012 server but may have happened from time to time on 2008 & 2008 R2. However there are not any network problems so it just leaves the server & Client
I have searched for possible resolutions including:-
Turning  off the Cache for the share
Disabling the network adapter power setting to allow windows to put the device to sleep.
Disabling  Antivirus/configuring it to ignore folders for on access scanning
Disabling SMB  Signing
Configuring the  clients DWORD registry value SilentForcedAutoReconnect=1 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\NetCache
Setting the "NET CONFIG SERVER /AUTODISCONNECT:-1" to not drop client
connections
The last bit of trouble shooting that I can think of is to disable SMB2 and SMB3 as that does a lot of caching and batching of packets which could also be the cause of the problem.
I have looked at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2696547/en-us
I have disabled SMB2&3 on the server as that is very straight forward.
When I get to the section about disabling SMB2 on the client the command fails.
sc config
lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
  After running the above command, it returns an error: 
      [SC] ChangeServiceConfig FAILED 1059:
      Circular Service Dependency was specified.
So it's not worth running the following command:
sc config mrxsmb20 start= disabled
I have tried the command on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 10 just to confirm that it's  nothing to do with any particular PC, machines in Domains and Non-Domain machines.
So, my questions are:-
1, is
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2696547/en-us actually correct and up to date and for the OSes (Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 2012 server and Windows 10) with latest updates & service packs?
2, How do I disable SMB2 and SMB3 on clients for troubleshooting purposes the server to resolve problems with shared files (multi user access)
3, If I just disable SMB2 & 3 from the server would that force the clients not to use SMB2 when communicating with the server and therefore not caching the directory structure and file not found etc? I have seen posts that suggest this is not the case.
4. Does sc.exe have a bug in it?
Thanks in advance
Rob

Answer 1

Hi,
I made a test in our testing enviroment, everything works fine to disable SMB2 and 3. For your problem, in my opinion, as I didn't find any specific report about this error, it would be better to use Process Monitor to capture the trace when running the
command.
Start Process Monitor, then set the filter as cmd.exe, after that, open CMD and execute the command.
Process Monitor:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
In addition, I found another thread that had similar error with yours, you can take its solution as reference.
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/506828c8-e7af-4039-aca7-43321939bb55/offline-files-synchronization-error-the-file-specified-cannot-be-found?forum=w7itpronetworking
Roger Lu
TechNet Community Support
Roger,
Many thanks for the time taken to look into this.
I've downloaded process monitor and loaded it. I filtered for cmd.exe started capture and saved a 1mb file.
However I don't think this is going to help unless you can point me in the direction of what you're expecting to see in the capture file? If you want me to send you it I can but it does contain personal information which I'd rather not place online.
You can recreate the problem yourself by doing the following:
Go to modern.ie
Download any windows 7 virtual machine for your preferred of virtualisation  platform 
log in, start cmd as administrator and run the command
sc.exe config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
You will also receive the same error.
[SC] ChangeServiceConfig FAILED 1059:
Circular Service Dependency was specified.
You can also try it on the Windows 8 and 8.1 machine if you have time.
I checked the link to the similar error and that just looks at the file not found problem which is the smb2 cache. They still didn't resolve the slow access to the share which is seen on a machine that has anti-virus on it when you go to right click
on the folder or a file in the folder. It's about a 20 second (spinning circle) pause every time. The problem is bigger than that. If you have shared files on the network share that are used by multiple people at the same time, say a spreadsheet or database
file windows is loosing the connection to that file so the user cannot write to it even if they have the file open. The smb2 caching shouldn't cause that problem.
It appears that I have to disable from SMB2 and SMB3 and ensure that the clients only use SMB1.
If SMB2 & SMB3 are disabled from the lanmanworkstation service the clients will not do any caching even if the server has disabled the share cache (offline files for that share).
The problem with the "Circular reference" error message is standard across all versions of windows that have "smb2" or "smb2 and smb3". Can you recreate that problem? Or is it working on your windows computer and on the machines
downloaded from modern.ie ?
My testing has shown that the command "sc.exe config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi" does not work. Therefore that's the one I want to resolve first. By resolving that I may be able to get the clients accessing the share to behave
themselves and use the shared files correctly as they always did from Windows 95/NT4 through to Windows XP and 2003/2008 server.
I'm unable to recreate the problem with multiple users having access to shared database files on windows 2012 server from Windows 7 clients were the access to the files drops once a day or once every couple of days.
Kindest Regards
Robert