Windows browsing with TCP/IP

When mapping drives outside of the domain, you need to do a "connect as" with a user and password that's part of the domain. look like you might have some DNS problems. try mapping the drive with the IP address.
To resolve the IP address of the server, open command prompt and type "ping -a server1"
this will give you the ip address of server1.
try mapping the shared using the ip address. i.e. \\10.30.50.8\shared

Sounds like you need to setup a WINS Server for WINS resolution and then point all servers to that server. Then you should be able to do the shares anyway you wish.

When you use ping, since it is a tcp/ip function, name resolution is always by host file and DNS. Since the long name is in DNS, and the short name implies the long name since the two machines are in the same domain (DNS domain), ping finds both names.

Drive mapping uses SMB, which can function over tcp/ip, Netbeui, or NWLINK. In this case, the order of name resolution can be what is catching you if for some reason the NETBIOS name of a server is not found for some reason.

Check that theserver machine names and DNS names match (it is normal practice, but nothing forces this to happen).

Check that the server names actually ARE in the DNS.

You should strongly consider using WINS for all NETBIOS resolution. If everyone uses WINS, everyone should get the same results.

To avoid nasty surprises, check the contents of the hosts and lmhosts files on the machine you are using for testing. You might find that one or both of the servers are there, possibly even with the names you think they have...

See the knowledge base artical at
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q134/3/04.asp
(no spaces in url)
for more info on browsing problems.

Good luck.

It sounds like the network is working fine. To me it sounds like it may have something to do with the way the permissions are defined at the share.

In my experience, drive mappings must be done to a specific share and cannot be applied to the generic server. For this reason, in my organization, we have one share called "data" and users have different security permissions to the folders underneath (that are not "shares"). This eliminates unnecessary network broadcasts (each share is broadcast0 and also eliminates the confusion with user permissions that may change depending on if the user accesses the folder through one share that has one set of permissions or another share that has another set of permissions.

Ok, so you may say, how is my computer mapping to the \\server name and not a specific share ? My suspicion is that you are actually mapping to the shared root directory (shared by default for administrative purposes). It usually something like C$ where the $ indicatesthat the share is not broadcast across the network. One way you can check the share that the computer is mapping to when \\server is used is to see what folders can be viewed. Is it picking up some other share?

Ok, so here is my recommendation. Make 1 data share on each server and give Domain Users change rights. Put data or programs under specific folders where User groups are restricted or given rights as needed.

In your login scripts map a drive only to this share using the full path name of:
\\server\\share name

*Notice that this is not the same as the path name. If the share is the "data" folder on Server1 and the local path to the data folder is: c:\Level1\Level2\data then the path to map the drive is only
\\server1\data
but perhaps you already knew this.

Good luck and I hope I was able to help.

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