some computers on network unable to access shared files on server

I am a bit of a newbie when it comes to working with servers, trained in routers, firewalls etc primarily so please forgive any ignorance.

We have Windows Server 2003. All our computers run XP pro. Recently, some of our computers have become unable to access the shared file on the server. Most of our computers are fine, but two of them give the error message "the folder you entered does not appear to be valid. please choose another " when I enter //server/'shared' and when I go to browse other computers on our domain show up but the server does not. We are able to ping the server at these computers both by ip and name. We have had no recent changes other than converting our internet connection to static about two weeks before this began and some cleanup on all pc's (defrag etc). All computers appear free of any malware, virus, etc.

I have tried setting permissions individually by users, having it set to everyone, disabling all firewalls, etc and nothing seems to work. Any help would be appreciated

Hi bobbi, I would try removing then re-adding the problem computers to the domain.  Doing so might "mess up" profiles, though.

I agree with Chris, since the server works fine with the rest of your computers, it must be related to the troubled computers.  Start with one of them to see if it fixes your problems. 

Also check the troubled computers to be sure they are using the same DNS server (which most likely would be your 2003 server) if they are bypassing your internal DNS server you can get some weird unable to connect messages.

Dave

Thanks for the suggestions. Tried re-adding one to the domain, got the error message "a domain controller for the domain could not be contacted" so I'll check into some things here and if anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear them. Thanks

You probably statically assign it with an outside dns, or your dhcp is supplying outside dns servers.

if you can ping the ip of he server and not the name of the server, then you have the problem above.

Use your domain controller as your dns server.   <---best practice.

Hi bobbi,

Make sure of the following two things:

1) Ensure that the two computers in question are joined to your domain.

2) Ensure that you log into your domain using the appropriate domain username and password.

Why these need to be checked is that if you log into the two computers outside of the domain, you log in into the local environment (workgroup). Thus you will not be able to access network (domain) resources such as files on the file server.

Please try these suggestions and provide progress report.

I hope these suggestions help.

M. Osei-Boateng

Ready Hands International

Thank you all for your assistance. Both computers were added to the proper domain. I tried to disconnect and reconnect to the domain on one of the computers, it will not reconnect. Now it is giving the error

The error was DNS name does not exist

Common causes include

-the DNS SRV record is not registered in DNS

-One or more of the following zones do not include delegation to its child zone.

I also recently updated the DNS on the server as suggested above  (thanks alot for that suggestion, computers connected to the network other than these two causing problems are working even faster)

I will be looking into these most recent errors and will keep you all posted and as always appreciate and ideas.

Hi  bobbi,

here is some "light" reading for you (lol)

1. Check up on Active Directory to make sure it was installed properly after original installation
2. the DCDIAG.EXE tool
3. the NETDIAG.EXE tool

Best of luck, I hope these will help shed some light on your issues.