Hello. I have been beating my head on this problem for a while. I have a Windows 2003 R2 SP1 server, with an Windows XP SP3 client that is having difficulty accessing it via UNC (\\servername). The server it is trying to get to also happens to be the DNS server.
When contact is attempted, I receive the error "no network provider accepted the given network path". I m able to ping the server by name, and a ping -a resolved the correct name.
I am also able to perform a nslookup from the client and it resolves names properly from the server it is trying to contact.
I've tried just about everything that I can think of:
- Configured the client to use a DHCP server
- Ensured that the host file was not interfering
- flushed DNS on the client
- Ensured client was appearing properly in DNS
- Ensured that the DNS server the client is contacting is correct (it is the server I am trying to get to).
- I cleaned an extra nameserver out of DNS that no longer exists.
- Enabled salvaging on DNS
- Performed system restore on the client
- Disabled the firewall on the client.
- Ran SFC /scannow
One very odd aspect of this problem is that if I reboot the server then the client connects to it without issue, for about a day. I have to reboot the entire server, and not just the DNS service.
It is just happening to one client. Is there any suggestions that you'd have that I can try?