Now I get Operation not permitted.
Usual crap with filesharing from Windows.
You may need to connect directly to a named share rather than to the machine at top level. I also have a local (non-admin) user on the Windows box that I grant explicit rights to on each share, and use that as the login.
Before I posted this last time and updated my posts I tested on a one day old OSMC Matix install that had zero existing file sharing or copied files added to it. It worked as expected and the share works. Maybe check passwords.xml and see if you have an outdated password there.
For the adding of network location you do notā¦ which is kind of the point. This allows you to navigate to all the shares on a machine easily like you could with NetBIOS.
I donāt have a passwords.xml (I donāt think - where should it be?)
In the root of userdata along with your sources.xml (assuming your not using profiles). If you donāt have a passwords.xml then you never added any network credentials in the proper manor before 
as it is only created once you do that the first time. Did you add your user/pass as I showed in the screengrab? Iām assuming you donāt have an open share as Windows hasnāt supported that (at least out of the box) for quite a long time now.
Oh, right. Iāve never managed to get that to work. 
But actually it might be less secure tooā¦? If you only connect to specific, named shares then you can use a Windows login that has been set up not to have any access to anything outside of where the videos are stored. Iām not sure that a user like that would be allowed to have a top-level browsing view.
No. You didnāt say it was necessary 
Working now. I will update my filesharing Wikiā¦
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Kodi is saving passwords in a plain text file so if one is worried about security on the shares they are using that is probably a non-starter on that front. What is visible is only the shares that the user you define bas access to. There is no special trick or anything here. Old school SMBv1 w/NetBIOS we could just browse around the network and easily find the machine. That no longer works for us in this application (non-Win Kodi) so all we are doing is basically adding a shortcut to the network location to save the trouble and effort of manually typing in UNC paths for different shares.
Iāve also found it to be helpful getting around issues with things like settings the Artist information folder and movie set art to a network path. Last I tried (which was with Leia) you could not save a UNC path if manually typed into the settings. However if you added the network location through file manager then those settings options would let you browse and save the same path.
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I did a bit more testing and figured Iād post a (slight) correction/clarification on the lower level mechanics of how the passwords are getting stored for @grahamh or anyone else playing with this who might find it relevant. When you setup a network location it stores a full UNC path with credentials in userdata/mediasources.xml. This means that on a clean system when you add the new network location the userdata/passwords.xml will not be created yet. However, Once you add a source from that new network location (which is done with browsing and not having to enter the already existing password from setting up the network location) then Kodi puts the path sans credentials in userdata/sources.xml and stores the credentials for that path in userdata/passwords.xml as it should be.
(I apologize if Iām being pedantic by posting this)
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One last clarification/update/collection of words that probably wonāt mean much to many people from something I typed here; it would seem that there was an update in Kodi at some point where what I quoted above it no longer valid in practice. It used to be when adding a source (and Iām talking about manually adding a source and not talking about adding a network location here) with credentials that they would get stored as part of the absolute file path in the database which is bad practice. Currently when you type in a UNC path with credentials (ie smb://username:password@host/path/) Kodi now strips these credentials from the display after you exit the text entry (ie it only displays smb://host/path/) and when you press OK to add the source it automatically puts the credentials in passwords.xml instead of sources.xml as it was doing before. It even strips credentials from old paths if you tell it to edit the source and tell it to save it again.
I would note that adding the network path is still preferable as it not only keeps you from having to type in more than one path, but I found when testing that Estuaryās text input for the source path input is lacking an @ symbol on the on screen keyboard thus forcing you to use a keyboard/web interface/or mobile Kodi remote to actually type out a credentialed UNC path. Since the network location input has separate user/pass fields to fill out there is no @ that needs to be input so it can be done with just a regular remote control.
Not so. Press shift and itās above the W.
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