Windows 7 Problem connecting to network drive by server name, but by IP address works

Greg 108T

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Joined
Jun 9, 2011
We recently migrated our users from one domain to another. After the migration, 2 users are having problems connecting to their home directories on the network. They get an access denied error message if they try to connect using \\servername\sharename but it works fine if they connect using \\ipaddress\sharename. Both of these users are running Windows 7 and both of them had their home directories synchronized locally so they could work offline. It does not sound like a permissions issue since they can connect using IP address. It is not a DNS issue since they can both connect to other mapped drives that are on the same server as their home directories. I think it has something to do with syncronizing locally, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?
 
Greg 108T:
Hello and welcome to the forum.
If the IP address works fine but the netbios name fails, then it is almost certainly name resolution. Make sure that the problem machines are pointing at the Domain DNS server as their preferred DNS server, or if you are using a WINS server of course you would want to point them to that as well. But mostly in AD Domains the Domain DNS server is king and clients have to have that configured properly either from and through a properly configured DHCP server, or by manually assigning static values.
Thanks for joining our community
Regards
Randy
 
Hi Randy,

I tried putting a host file entry in these 2 computer and that didn't work either. Also, these 2 computer can connect to other shares on that same server by server name...it is only their home directories that cannot connect by server name.
 
This is similar to a problem I've run into myself, where targets could be pinged either way (by name or IP) but could be connected to only through their IPs (e.g. \\123.456.789.123 instead of \\servername), all this happening only from a Windows 7 machine. The targets could also be reached using "net use \\servername\resource", oddly. The error was something like "unknown user". Turns out stale credentials was being used from the Windows 7 machine. Have your users go to Control Panel: User Accounts: Manage My Account: Manage My Credentials. Most likely there will be saved credentials entries for the targets they're having trouble with. Have them delete the saved credentials entries and then try reconnecting normally.
 
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