Windows Server 2008 R2 loses ability to connect to network share

Posted by JamesB on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by JamesB
Published on 2011-01-30T18:46:36Z Indexed on 2011/11/27 9:54 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 231

I could sure use some help with this one:

I've got two Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Terminal Servers, as well as several 2003 servers (DNS / Wins / AD / DC). On the two 2008 boxes, every now and then they will get in this mode where you can't map a drive to a random server. I say random server because it's not always the same server that you can't map to.

Here is a summary of what I can and can't do:

net view \\servername Sometimes this works, sometimes it does not.
net view \\FQDN This always works.
net view \\IPAddress This always works.
ping servername Sometimes this works, sometimes it does not.
ping FQDN This always works.
ping IPAddress This always works.

I've been looking all over for a solution to this. It sure seems like Microsoft would have a hotfix by now.

The kicker to this is that it sometimes works great, especially after a reboot. It may run for 2 weeks just fine, but all of a sudden it will fail to resolve the remote server name. It will then be this way for a few days, then it might start working again. Also, while it's in the mode of not working, the other servers have no problem getting there. It's just these 2008 R2 Terminal Servers.

Setting a static entry in the Hosts file and LMHosts does not make it work. All servers have static IPs and they are registered in DNS and Wins just fine.

Here is a long thread on MS Technet of the exact same problem, but they don't have a good solution. Here is their workaround (It was from June of 2010):

Good news - a hotfix is in the works and a workaround has been identified:
Root cause is that since this is SMB1 all user sessions are on a single TCP connection to the remote server. The first user to initiate a connection to the remote SMB server has their logon-ID added to the structure defining the connection. If that user logs off all subsequent uses of that TCP session fail as the logon-id is no longer valid. As a workaround for now to keep the issue from happening you will want to have the user not logoff the Terminal Server only disconnect their sessions.

Any word from anyone out there about a solution? Any help would sure be appreciated.

Thanks, James

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about networking

Related posts about dns