Re: Problem with Mapped Drives



"Kerry Brown" wrote:


> If NETBEUI fixed the problem then the problem was probably DNS or NETBIOS
> related.
> Installing NETBEUI will sometimes help if DNS is mixed up or
> NETBIOS is not working right. If the workstations are in a domain then I'd
> suspect DNS. If peer to peer or workgroup then NETBIOS. Installing NETBEUI
> is a bandaid for a symptom, not a fix for a problem.

Well, let's take a little closer look at this...

I have seen several situations where win98 machines worked reliably in
peer2peer for years, and then XP machines were either added, or some of the
98 machines were upgraded to xp. After this happened, the 98 machines
continued to work, but the xp did not work reliably (sometimes works,
sometimes doesn't) when browsing shares, or trying to access persistently
mapped drives. Didn't seem to matter whether the share was on an XP or a 98
machine - xp had problems accessing them and 98 did not. Nothing changed with
respect to DNS settings (the only DNS server involved was that of the ISP,
which certainly didn't have their workstations in its database).

Since there is only one configurable item in XP's Client for Microsoft
Networking, this problem is occurring on a lower level that is not accessible
to the user. Either Win98 was doing it wrong (but it worked) or XP is doing
it wrong when running netbios over tcp/ip. Win2k Prof does not have this
problem. Both Win2k and XP use the same BSD ip stack, but for some reason, MS
removed Netbeui as a default choice in xp.

In the domain scenario, the DC is handling DNS. Again, we have seen win98
work without these issues and XP does not work reliably with persistently
mapped drives. It should be noted that not all sites exhibit this problem. We
have one site that is running SBS2000 and all XP workstations, using just
netbios over tcp/ip, and they have never had this issue. The other customer
has SBS 2003. Both of these are running ISA server which means they were
going through the server to get to the internet.

No problems are seen at either site accessing the internet (other than
occasional DSL outages), so I would have to wonder why it would have a
problem on just the local/client net. That leaves netbios...

While it may seem to be a band-aid, getting the customer going is our main
priority, and theirs. So far, Microsoft has not given me any medals or other
compensation for the bugs I've found while doing field QA on their products,
so there is no incentive for me to fire up the debugger and find out what is
really going on when I have a fix in my back pocket. We deal with mostly
small businesses - if I was MIS overseeing a significant number of
workstations, I would feel differently.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Problem with Mapped Drives
    ... >> If NETBEUI fixed the problem then the problem was probably DNS or NETBIOS ... > peer2peer for years, and then XP machines were either added, or some of ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Master Browser problem
    ... DNS and WINS server as well. ... it will use DNS to resolve DNS names and NetBIOS to resolve ... IPX should not generally be installed on your machines unless they are ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.general)
  • Re: AD & BIND: domain listing is slow
    ... > Is it possible to skip NETBIOS resolution or at least shorten the timeout ... The reason is that Browsing is a NetBIOS problem so even ... the DNS resolution for it is technically part of NetBIOS. ... >>> The resolution of machines on the domain is very slow in the Network ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.active_directory)
  • Re: WINS is realy needed
    ... W2k and later machines try DNS and Netbios name ... DNS will resolve a simple name like machinename as long as the machine ... >>>,win2k3,xp for name resolving using DNS only, now for the question. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.networking)
  • Re: What is FQDN ?
    ... Active Directory setup Wizard didn't add my computer name which is "DC1DNSAD". ... Connection-specific DNS Suffix. ... I think at one Point AD Setup Wizard ask you Question What should be NETBIOS ... How to Configure OEx for Internet News ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.dns)