So I am having an issue I have never encountered before. Granted, my experience is mainly in large domains, and this issue is just regarding my small home workgroup network.
The scene is: I have a machine I’m designating my “multimedia” server; it is running XP Pro SP2; machine name “pegasus”, NetBIOS name “PEGASUS”. I have it sharing two 80Gb partitions, one filled with MP3/Ogg files, the other partition serving video files captured from an NVIDIA Personal Cinema card. This is a workgroup network, no domain servers/authentication.
The problem: other machines, when browsing the multimeda server, cannot view all the files being shared. For example, the MP3/Ogg partition is 80Gb, it has over 50Gb of files in it with some 8500 individual files. Another machine, in the same workgroup, maps a drive to the shared MP3/Ogg folder and can perhaps see only 1/6 of the files. Getting the properties of the drive on the remote machine shows the correct partition size, but it says there are only 2325 files contained within it, short over 6000 files. The MP3/Ogg files are broken down by artist folder, then subfolders for each CD or album. I can see all of the artists folders, but many of the album subfolders are “missing”. While browsing the artist folders I click on SOME of the artists folder to view the subcontents and if I’m doing this via the mapped drive letter I will get the error message {Artist folder} is not accessible : The specificed server cannot perform the requested operation. If I go and browse via “Network Neighbourhood” and go by machine name resolution I can see all the folders, but the affected folders when I try to open them are just empty. And this may seem stupid to say, but the files are actually there. I can go the multimedia machine (pegasus) either directly, or via Remote Desktop Connection and indeed, all the files are there — the full 8500.
What I have tried: at first I thought this was an NTFS permissions issue, since I have strict permissions set normally on all my partitions. I finally removed all permissions on the shared paritions and gave the “Everyone” group full access and had all subfolders and files inherit that. No change. I thought, and still think it might, have something to do with the NetBIOS name resolution since if you go browse via machine name and traverse the folders you can generally see “more” of the files; but even that is hit and miss. For example, an entire folder and its subcontents are visible and availabe for use via browsing by machine name, then 10 minutes later, they are not. The files become “invisble”.
Standard troubleshooting: all machines are on the same workgroup; name is COMCAST. All machines, including the multimedia server, have Client of Microsoft Networks AND File and Printer Sharing for MS Networks enabled. The Server and Computer Browsing service are running on the “server” machine. Computer browsing service is running on the other machines that wish to view the “shared” files. NetBIOS is enabled on all machines.
So I am at a loss. Does anyone have some insight, something simple that I’m just missing here?
Appreciated in advance.
