Cant open PCs in the same domain

[tendy]

Hi guys..i need help, i have a big problem...m working on a co-porate network for an organistaion with two major branches. These two branches are onthe same domain but in different cities. At the HQ, (Branch A) there is a file sever running Samba and its under a windows active directory server . The other branch (B) connects to the Samba file server and its also under Windows sever 2003,

Now my problem is that in branch (B) all the machines running Win2k and above , cannot open the file server using its hostname, they can only open it when i use its IP adress e.g \\***.**.**.*. So i was thinking tht my DNS configuration could have been corrupted...idnt know.....pliz help im desperate!

[Nuke]

It could be dns, but more likely WINS. I don't know much about either WINS or Domains, but it would make sence to me to check what the other machines use as a WINS server and to add it to the machines giving trouble. If you can't find the Wins server, try making it the IP of the Domain Controller.

[SBSP]

It could be the DHCP server handing out the wrong information.

I take it when you ping on the hostname it returns nothing.
But when you ping on the IP it comes back.

Have you tried to ping the hostname ? or only tried to access shares using a hostname and IP ?
Reason i ask is sometimes the DNS server can mess up when it comes to resolving
hostnames ive seen cases where a DNS returns the wrong IP for a hostname. So when you go to that PC its IP is different to what the DNS server said.

Back to DHCP, If you do an

Code: Select all

ipconfig /all

It will tell you which DNS server its using, if there is no DNS it could be the DHCP server
which is not configured correctly.

If ipconfig /all returns the correct DNS server, check that its services and everything else is started and that the trust on the servers are still good.

can Site B PC's on its lan resolve any IP's ? or does the problem only relate to samba on the site A.
Try to manually add a Host A record on the DNS server on site b "SAMBA" and its "IP"
or try to add a forward lookup zone in site B's DNS to Site A's DNS and test if DNS B can Ping DNS A (if ICMP traffic is allowed via the firewalls)

Edit:

One more thing.
If site b is only a few PC like 3 or 4 or so.

Open.

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C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

with notepad.
and Add the IP of the Sambaserver and its hostname to each PC

E.G

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost
10.0.0.1 samba-server-hostname

Where 10.0.0.1 is the Ip of samba.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT HOW YOU SHOULD RESOLVE THE PROBLEM
But if it takes away some pressure tempory why not.

[airborne]

Thread revival:

Do a NSLOOKUP (from CMD) to check wheter the away PCs are using the correct DNS server. Also, check what happens if you ping the servername using the FULL DNS NAME, eg: sambaserver.domain.com

Do you have DNS replication partners between the 2 sites ??