Can't browse to \\tower from Windows - what am I overlooking?

My little network consists of a couple of Win7 PCs, a Mac and an XP system. Recently the XP PC has not been able to browse to \\tower and it's driving me nuts. Here are some things that I can confirm:

- Every other PC / Mac can browse to \\tower no problem

- I can get to the Unraid control panel via either //tower or the IP which is 192.168.0.107

- On the XP PC I have entered 192.168.2.107<TAB>tower in the hosts file

- On the tower, net lookup master returns 192.168.2.107 which is correct - net lookup bpmmaster (the XP PC) returns 192.168.2.101 - which is also correct

- On the XP PC nbtstat -a tower returns a Host not found error.

- I've rebooted everything several times, switched off firewalls etc.

I've also searched these forums a good bit and can't yet find the right answer for me. I'd really appreciate some pointers and some other stuff to try here.

Many thanks,

Robbie

Is the XP in the same WorkGroup as all the other PCs?

It still sounds like name resolution is not working correctly.

nbtstat -a lists the target machine's name table and since it is returning host not found, the nbtstat tool cannot make a connection.  To see your local netbios table, issue nbtstat -r on the Windows XP box and see if tower is listed.  If not, issue nbtstat -RR then ipconfig /flushdns on the XP box then check with nbtstat -r again.  Even if it's not listed the 2nd time around try pinging tower from the XP box and see what happens.  If pings work, name resolution is working and you should be able to access the unRAID box using its name.  If no response there is a deeper issue.  Please post the path to the hosts file you edited, and post the hosts file here as hosts.txt.

If name resolution IS working and you cannot browse to the network shares on the unRAID box using \\tower there are other problems and we can go from there

Hi, thanks for the replies.

graywolf, that's a fair question and I should have mentioned in my first post that the workgroup is indeed the same on all devices attached.

Spectrum, thanks for the tips. I followed through on the instructions you posted but alas I still cannot browse to \\tower\ using Explorer on the XP box. ping tower works fine, as you'll see in the notes I posted below from the cmd prompt. It's just browsing the filesystem is the problem, and only from this XP PC. I've attached the hosts.txt file as requested.

Any other tips to try would be most welcome.

Robbie

C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>nbtstat -a tower

Hamachi:
Node IpAddress: [5.115.121.136] Scope Id: []

    Host not found.

Local Area Connection:
Node IpAddress: [192.168.2.103] Scope Id: []

    Host not found.

C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>nbtstat -r

    NetBIOS Names Resolution and Registration Statistics
    ----------------------------------------------------

    Resolved By Broadcast     = 1
    Resolved By Name Server   = 0

    Registered By Broadcast   = 10
    Registered By Name Server = 0

    NetBIOS Names Resolved By Broadcast
---------------------------------------------
           BRN008077D16CEF<00>

C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>nbtstat -RR
    The NetBIOS names registered by this computer have been refreshed.


C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>ipconfig /flushdns

Windows IP Configuration

Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>nbtstat -r

    NetBIOS Names Resolution and Registration Statistics
    ----------------------------------------------------

    Resolved By Broadcast     = 1
    Resolved By Name Server   = 0

    Registered By Broadcast   = 10
    Registered By Name Server = 0

    NetBIOS Names Resolved By Broadcast
---------------------------------------------
           BRN008077D16CEF<00>

C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>ping tower

Pinging tower [192.168.2.107] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.2.107: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.107: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.107: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.2.107: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.2.107:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Robbie>

hosts.txt

Name resolution is indeed working.  Can you browse network shares on other machines from the afflicted box?

Go to start->run and enter services.msc to open the services browser.  What are the status and startup type for the following:

Computer Browser

Server

Workstation

Also double check the properties for the network card and post back which items are installed.  Should be Client for Microsoft Networks, TCP/IP, etc.

Another thought, what is the result of a direct mapping rather than browsing. ie from the command line execute:

net use x: \\tower\sharename

Replace x with a free drive letter and sharename with an available share

Thanks for the reply. I've tried all of your suggestions and unfortunately still no joy!

- I can indeed browse to other network shares from the XP box without any problems

- The three services you mentioned are all saying 'Started' as their status

- The network card has four items installed and enabled:

  - Client for Microsoft Windows

  - File and Printer sharing for Microsoft Windows

  - QoS Packet Scheduler

  - Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)

    - TCP/IP is set to Obtain IP and DNS automatically, and under Advanced settings:

      - IP Address: DHCP enabled; Automatic metric ticked

      - DNS: Append primary DNS suffixes ticked; Append parent suffixes ticked; Register this connection's addresses ticked; Use this connection's DNS not ticked

      - WINS: Enable LMHOSTS Lookup ticked; NetBIOS Setting Default

      - Options: TCP/IP filtering, Properties all set to 'Permit All'

- The direct mapping returned 'The network path was not found' on a couple of different shares and different drive names

Thanks again for your help, any other suggestions you can think of for me to try?

Robbie

Are both machines on the same subnet?  Routers in between can make things a bit more difficult.

Yes, they appear to be - here's the ipconfig from the XP machine:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

        Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
        IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.103
        Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
        Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.1

and from the the unraid system:

root@Tower:~# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:66:07:d9:ae
          inet addr:192.168.2.107  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:78898 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:63248 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:9908948 (9.4 MiB)  TX bytes:60044005 (57.2 MiB)
          Interrupt:218 Base address:0xc000

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:57 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:57 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:4676 (4.5 KiB)  TX bytes:4676 (4.5 KiB)

Yup that's the same subnet.  The fact that you can connect from the XP box to other network shares, but not to network shares on the unRAID box is a bit suspicious.  Everything points to there not being a network browsing problem, yet one still exists.  Other than being sure there are no firewalls running that might be black-holing traffic on ports 135-139 and port 445 I'm out of ideas.  Last ditch effort, from the Windows XP machine try

net view tower

and post the result.

Well, I found the problem and now I feel like a fool!

It was only when you mentioned in your last post to double check the firewall is off that I discovered the problem.

I had checked that Windows Firewall is definitely off and made sure that my Avast firewall was shut down during these tests too. But your post prompted me to have a look at other running processes and guess what I found hiding in the background? ZoneAlarm! Shutting it down fixed the problem immediately, I'm now happily browsing my unraid again.

Sorry for wasting your time on this and thanks for the help, I certainly learned something! And I've no idea how ZoneAlarm suddenly started stealthily running again, probably 2 years after I uninstalled it. Ah the fun of it all.

Thanks again, and Happy Christmas!

Robbie

Glad you got it resolved.  I'd be a little worried about a program removed 2 years prior suddenly coming back!