Windows 7 network path not found without trailing backslash

I've run into a bit of an odd issue, one of the netbooks we've been working on seems to be having an issue with network paths. The machine is running Windows 7 Starter. If I try to run the following:

\\server\fd

I am greeted with an error:

0x80070035 Network path not found.

However if I type:

\\server\fd\

Everything is fine and the share opens as expected. (Note trailing backslash) Any ideas what might be causing this to happen?

An old post, but I will post my findings here as a reference for others experiencing this problem.

I have found two possible causes for this:

One is described in http://forum.sysinternals.com/curious-windows-7-issue-connecting-to-unc_topic25113.html and has to do with the registry settings

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NetworkProvider
"ProviderOrder"="LanmanWorkstation,RDPNP"
"ProviderOrder"="LanmanWorkstation,RDPNP"

The above should be the correct setting.

The other cause I found by comparing a broken and working pc in our environement. Working pc's had the registry setting

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters
FileNotFoundCacheLifetime = 0
DirectoryCacheLifetime = 0

setting these (and more specificly DirectoryCacheLifetime) fixed the problem on a machine not working before.