UNC Problems on Vista

[popechild]

I'm in the middle of a complete upgrade/reinstall, using Vista Home Premium for the first time, and I've encountered a problem when setting up my media import directories. I'm using UNC paths for everything, and any paths to external boxes show up fine. But if I try to UNC to a local folder (ie. \\HTPC\d\dvds where HTPC is the name of the machine Sage is installed on), it keeps telling me the folder doesn't exist, and asks if I want to create it.

Using Windows Explorer to make sure I've got sharing and permissions all setup properly, I have a similar issue. If I type \\HTPC\d\dvds into the address bar, it'll give me an error that "Windows cannot access \\HTPC\d\dvds". Here's where it gets weird though:

If I don't type out the full address, but just type "\\" and wait, it will pop up a little list of all the machines on the network, and HTPC is listed. If I navigate down to HTPC in the list, then type another "\" after it, it shows me all the shared folders under \\HTPC\ including "d". Similarly, if I then go down and highlight the "d" and type another "\" (giving me \\HTPC\d\ in the address bar), it will now show me all the shares under d, including "dvds." I can now navigate down to that and select it and it opens it up fine. But again, if I just type \\HTPC\d\dvds directly into the bar, without letting it "find" the folders for me as I go, it gives me an access error.

Is this some kind of funky Vista thing? I assume this is related to why Sage can't see the local UNC paths. Any suggestions on this one?

Thanks.

[popechild]

A bit more info. It appears that I CAN connect (through Sage and through explorer) by actually putting in the IP. (So instead of \\HTPC\d, which fails, I use \\192.168.1.113\d, which works fine).

Not sure if there's a downside to doing it this way for the Sage import directories (presuming of course that I make sure the IP is static), but I'm still curious as to what the deal is. Is there a built-in DNS or something that should route traffic on the network that's failing to do so, but only in very limited circumstances? (I'd assume it's not a router issue, as this same machine used UNC paths for local directories in XP without a problem.)

[babgvant]

Is the network designated as "Private"?

Did you enable network discovery and file sharing?

Do you have WINS/NETBIOS enabled on the adapter?

[popechild]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Is the network designated as "Private"?

Yes it is. Could this be it? I'm not sure I understand why this would allow me to use UNC to access other machines, but not the local machine, but I'll give it a shot.

Did you enable network discovery and file sharing?

Yes.

Do you have WINS/NETBIOS enabled on the adapter?

I have no idea what those are, so I'm not sure. I'll have to look into it.

[babgvant]

You want it to be private, that should enable things like NETBIOS and publishing the name on the network.

Can other machines find it using only the name (not the IP)?

what happens when you nslookup the name from a cmd prompt?

[Skirge01]

While I realize you said you're using Vista, I find it quite ironic that our company recently had a nearly identical issue after installing SP3 on a few of our XP machines. We spent weeks tracking this down and it turned out that SP3 exposed a flaw in the way DFS was set up for a single folder. We had absolutely no issues with the folder pre-SP3. The fix was to delete and recreate the affected share from scratch.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by babgvant

You want it to be private, that should enable things like NETBIOS and publishing the name on the network.

Can other machines find it using only the name (not the IP)?

what happens when you nslookup the name from a cmd prompt?

I enabled NETBIOS, the network is set to private, rebooted, still no luck. I'm not real sure what I'm doing when I try nslookup, but if I go to a command prompt and type nslookup \\htpc\d (which is one of the shares), I get the following: Server: Unknown, Address: 192.168.1.1, Unknown can't find \\htpc\d: Non-existant domain.

But I have a feeling I'm not doing that right, because I get the same message trying it with a UNC path to a folder on another machine that I can access just fine.

Originally Posted by Skirge01

While I realize you said you're using Vista, I find it quite ironic that our company recently had a nearly identical issue after installing SP3 on a few of our XP machines. We spent weeks tracking this down and it turned out that SP3 exposed a flaw in the way DFS was set up for a single folder. We had absolutely no issues with the folder pre-SP3. The fix was to delete and recreate the affected share from scratch.

I tried to delete and re-create one of the folders and re-share it. No luck.

[babgvant]

nslookup machinename

then

nslookup machinename.domain (get from your router config page or ipconfig /all)

there's also a setting on the adapter's tcpip config to "register this connection's address..." make sure that's checked.

[popechild]

Grrr...

"htpc" is not the same thing as "htcp".

Yes, I had completely spelled the computer name wrong when I upgraded to Vista, so anything I tried to do that referenced "htpc" failed as a result.

I learned something about networking through the process though, so I appreciate all the help!

[babgvant]

Ouch! At least it's sorted