Recently ran into a bizarre problem on our NT Server. I’ve mostly worked around it but still haven’t resolved it.
This server, which is running NT4 SP6, is lightly used, primarily for file and print services. We almost never power it off or reboot it; I’m sure it had been 5-6 months since either was last done prior to this incident. On 29 December I powered the server off for a long New Year’s Eve rest. On 2 January, I powered it back on and it came up fine. I powered my notebook on, it reconnected, no worries. It was only after several colleagues came to work that we discovered that only 4 clients could talk to the server; the remaining 6 could not. For several hours, I could find absolutely no pattern to explain why some could and some couldn’t connect.
Finally, I hit on NETBEUI — all of the successful clients had both NETBEUI and TCP/IP installed; the clients with only TCP/IP couldn’t connect. Mind you, the TCP/IP-only clients had worked fine on 29 December. BTW, I could ping all systems from the server but couldn’t ping the server from any system. Installing NETBEUI on the clients allowed them to see the server for file and print.
My assumption is that I somehow lost TCP/IP bindings on the server. Uninstalling and reinstalling TCP/IP on the server (and reinstalling SP6) didn’t change anything, however. While the clients can see the server via NETBEUI, the remaining victim is a TCP/IP-only network printer that I can ping from the server but is still invisible to NT.
Suggestions? Comments? Incantations?
Thanks