Can't see shares

[andykewcomp]

Had a problem at a customer site where I couldn't see some of the shares on various computers. Got mixed responses.

I used the net view workstation command to check all workstations.

Some worked ok.

A couple gave the following error:
System error 53 has occurred
The network path was not found

Another couple gave this error:
System error 5 has occurred
Access is denied

Problems viewing through Network Places as well. I tried to share a printer on one of the clients, but simply couldn't because of this problem.

Client site info:
Workstations are all in a Windows 2003 domain.
8 workstations in total - 4 use wireless, 4 are wired. Could see the shares ok on a couple of the wireless machines.
They were picking up IP addresses from their router. I turned off DHCP on the router and switched it on on the server.
All clients got a new IP address from the 2003 server.
Did a repair on all the network adapters. DNS, ARP caches all flushed ok.
DNS and DHCP on the server looked ok.
Could ping ok.

Is there a solution out there for this problem other than rebuilding the offending computers? Is there some sort of definitive troubleshooting checklist?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

[dveuve]

Coincidentally, I have the same thing happening in my organization. After I restart a computer, I'll only be able to view certain file shares. The only definitive example I can list is with our file server. We have roaming profiles, My Docs redirection and Desktop Redirection to a share called Personal. There are 6 other shares on that computer that should also be available, but after a restart, I can only view the Personal share. After a while, it discovers the rest of the shares.

Any guesses? I haven't really started troubleshooting as it wasn't a huge issue until today, when another user reported the same problem. It's either something specific on that server, or it's the roaming profiles / redirection (which I'm in the progress of rolling out.)

[andykewcomp]

Probably unlikely that the roaming profiles have anything to do with the problem. Maybe it's a permissions thing if you can see some shares and not others. Check the share permissions as well as the NTFS permissions.

[DUCKNCOV3R]

Is windows firewall enabled on these machines?
If so disabled or go into exceptions and allow file and printer sharing.
Also, make sure the server service is started.

[andykewcomp]

Thanks for those suggestions duckncover.

I had turned the XP firewall off on the clients, but still had the problem.

Server service may well have been the reason, but customer is a long way away, so won't be making the trip there for a while. What I did as a workround was to put their printer on another workstation.

[dveuve]

For mine, it's definitely not the firewall, and definitely not NTFS permissions. It goes even further -- if I go inside the share containing all personal data, I can only see my folder. If I go inside that, I can only see the folders that are used at startup (Read: Roaming Profile, and Home Directory). The NTFS permissions don't change, yet 15ish minutes later I can access the full share structure.

It's as if the file sharing service doesn't even attempt to look at all the shares on the server when I browse to it, or something. I can specify them by name, too, and it won't connect, saying that the path is invalid.

Any guesses?

[pushkin_singh]

How about if you browse that share from its IP address
Start-->Run--? \x.x.x.x{IP address of shared resource or folder}

and see if you can see & access the resource straight away, If yes this may conclude a problem with your DNS access may being slow although there can be many factors which can cause this, you will have to provide some more detail in order to drill down to bottom of this issue.

1. What OS are your clients running?
2. is it all clients or just a few having the issue?
3. Is it only data from this one shared folder or is it all shared folders?
4. Could you put both a very small .txt (1kb) and a large graphic file (1mb
or so) in the shared file on the server, access them from the client and
time them. Then wait a while and try the same thing again. Let me know if
there is a significant difference the second time.
5. From the command line on the client, run: nbtstat -r (case sensitive)
let me know what you get.

Pushkin.

[dveuve]

[pushkin_singh]

If you think this issue may be to do with Roaming profiles, Have you tried to re-create the affected roaming profiles & test if that resolves the issue

Alternatively have you tried loging onto with a different profile and re-map all drives again...Reboot system & see if you can access share without any issues as this will eliminate any other issues with your system.

Roaming profiles can be real headache at times to deal with (saying this with my past experince)

Pushy

[hush]

can you telnet into port 445?