Network issue - lose UNC but not IP connectivity

[matt91]

I've been experiencing a frustrating network issue for the past couple of weeks, and it's really got me baffled.

Once every few days, my Sage server loses it's network connection when I try to access via UNC path, but it continues to be available via IP address. I also can't browse to other computers in my local network via the network browser, but it can access the internet.

When this happens, I do see an error on the server. It doesn't have any specifics, but says there was a svchost error, and it sends an error report.

My extenders still work, since they connect via IP address. However, since I have my recording directories setup as UNC (vs local drive) Sage can't actually record anything (even though the directories are local on the server itself).

A band-aid fix to this would be to switch my recording directories to local drives so that when this happens, at least Sage can still record. However, I'd obviously like to fix this because other things don't work when I can't access the computer via UNC.

I don't see anything in the system log, nor in the Sage log (other than errors about not being able to find "//sage_server/recording_dir").

Any thoughts on what could be going on here; or what to check?

[GKusnick]

Do you have an NT domain on your LAN, or just a Windows workgroup? If it's a domain, I'd guess you have a problem with your DNS/WINS server. If it's a workgroup, then it could have something to do with master browser contention, but I'm not as familiar with that style of networking (I use a domain).

As a workaround for recording purposes, you could try adding an entry to the HOSTS file on your Sage server mapping the server name to its own IP. So even if name lookup goes down on the LAN, it can still find itself.

[matt91]

Oh, important point I forgot to mention: Windows workgroup only, running on XP Pro.

thanks for the hosts-file hint.
Matt