Problems with name resolution

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gyorgy Vizkelethy
  • Start date Start date
G

Gyorgy Vizkelethy

I have a few PCs on my home network, mostly XP Home and
one XP Professional. One of the XP Home machines has a
printer that is shared and used by everybody. All the PCs
can connect to this PC (referred as server in the
followings) except one laptop XP Home machine (referred
as client in the followings). It has also Novell on it,
my wife uses it at work. The server shows up in the
client's network neighborhood, but when I click on it it
says it is an ivalid path. If I try to connect to the
printer using the NETBIOS name, I cannot. But I can
connect to it if I use the IP address of the server. It
seems to me that it is a name resolution problem. Any
help would be appreciated. Please e-mail to
(e-mail address removed).
 
Gyorgy Vizkelethy said:
I have a few PCs on my home network, mostly XP Home and
one XP Professional. One of the XP Home machines has a
printer that is shared and used by everybody. All the PCs
can connect to this PC (referred as server in the
followings) except one laptop XP Home machine (referred
as client in the followings). It has also Novell on it,
my wife uses it at work. The server shows up in the
client's network neighborhood, but when I click on it it
says it is an ivalid path. If I try to connect to the
printer using the NETBIOS name, I cannot. But I can
connect to it if I use the IP address of the server. It
seems to me that it is a name resolution problem. Any
help would be appreciated. Please e-mail to
(e-mail address removed).
Click to expand...


Sounds like NetBIOS name resolution failure.

Just to go over some basics again:

From the broken client, go to a command prompt and try to ping
another machine by IP address and then by name.
Eg:

ping 192.168.0.10
ping OtherBox

If the first works, but the second fails then this indicates
NetBIOS name resolution failure.

1) Ensure all firewalls are disabled or preferably un-installed
as per the mfr's instructions prior to any fault-finding.
Do this on both machines.

2) Go to TCP/IP properties, advanced button, WINS tab
and ensure NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP is enabled;
Do this on both machines.

3) On the client machine,
Go to a command prompt, and issue the command:
IPCONFIG /ALL.
Look at the Node Type.
If it's P-to-P, that's a problem.

In this case, go to Start | Run | regedit.
Go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netbt\Parameters

If either of the following values are present, delete them:

NodeType;
DhcpNodeType.

This should cause the node type to default correctly.
( the node type will report as 'Unknown' in the default case. )

For futher details, see this article:
Default Node Type for Microsoft Clients
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;160177


Post back with what you find...
 
Back
Top