Unable to connect to servers...

[IanGlinka]

I am having an odd problem. I can't connect to the servers in my network if I type their computer name in the UNC path. We have a server named 'carl' and if I type \\carl in the run window, I get a message saying "The network location can not be reached..." but if I type in carl's IP address in the run window: \\192.168.0.154 I connect and can map drives, use files, etc...

I suppose I COULD remap all of my network drives using the IP instead of the servername, but I don't understand why this is happening.

When I ping carl, I get "unknown host carl"
When I ping 192.168.0.154 I get responses

Here's a shot of what my mapped drives look like. You can see the red x's over the drives on carl (and albert, but that's a different story)

And here's the message I get when I try to click on one of those drives mapped to carl:

As you can see, the network drives mapped to the IP address version of carl do not have red x's on them, and they are completely usable.

I am running Win2kPro & Win2k Server.

Quite lost...
Any ideas?

Thanks!
Ian

 

[Sky14657]

the DNS-service runs properly?

 

[IanGlinka]

I checked out the event viewer, and there are several errors popping up on my machine. Perhaps one of these might lead me in at least the right direction, though I would still appreciate someone's help out there.

I KNOW this Domain is not set up entirely the way it should be. It never was in the first place. Active directory, and the whole DNS suffix thing completely threw me off. 2000 sure is a lot different from NT as far as network setup is concerned. Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone here and figure out how to smooth out my AD and domain setup. You'll see below, computers are registering as "[computername]..net" which throws back an error every time.

Here are a few copy/pastes from the description box of a few of the errors:

"Attempt to update DNS Host Name of the computer object in Active Directory failed. The updated value was 'ian_glinka..net'. The following error occurred:
The parameter is incorrect."

"No Windows NT or Windows 2000 Domain Controller is available for domain WORKGROUP. The following error occurred:
There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request."

"Attempt to update DNS Host Name of the computer object in Active Directory failed. The updated value was 'ian_glinka..net'. The following error occurred:
The RPC server is unavailable."

"Attempt to update DNS Host Name of the computer object in Active Directory failed. The updated value was 'ian_glinka..net'. The following error occurred:
The security context could not be established due to a failure in the requested quality of service (e.g. mutual authentication or delegation)."

 

[tgc]

personally, I'm sometimes lazy, and sometimes really lazy. I wouldn't bother with the org DNS. I'd simply associate all my dns names and ip's in the hosts file. Easy and really easy.

 

[IanGlinka]

Where is the 'hosts' file? tgc - What exactly did you mean by that?

 

[gsingh]

Did you edit hosts and lmhosts file? Since you can ping with IP but not with Name, check your lmhosts file to make sure Server name is added correctly.

 

[pweegar]

Do a search on *host*.*. That will find the files for you (Generally they are under your windows folder in system or system32). A host file associates an IP address to a computer name. Just follow the example that is in the file to set up your computers.