Windows 7 Requiring FQDN To Access Network Shares

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The Windows 2003 AD Domain I manage has several Windows XP clients and one Windows 7 RC1 client. Recently, the Windows 7 client has started refusing to access network shares unless the FQDN of the host is provided. Interestingly, DNS resolution using only the hostname works fine. Does anyone know what could be causing this or how to resolve it?

Works Fine

ping hostname

\\hostname.mydomain.internal\MyShare

Doesn't Work

\\hostname
Error: Error code 0x80070035 - The network path was not found.

\\hostname\MyShare
Error: Error code 0x80004005 - Unspecified error

UPDATE

This issue resolved itself about a day after I posted this question. Perhaps it was a time synchronization issue as Moose suggested. Thank you all for your help. If I am ever able to reproduce this problem, I will revisit this question and explore these solutions further.

domain-name-system
active-directory
windows-7
file-sharing
asked on Server Fault Sep 16, 2009 by Joseph Sturtevant • edited Oct 17, 2009 by Joseph Sturtevant

7 Answers

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Did you by chance stop and/or disable the Windows Firewall service in Windows 7 (as opposed to merely disabling the firewall itself)?

Windows 7 encounters all sort of weird network troubles if that service isn't running.

I saw a whole network going completely nuts because someone used a GPO to actually disable the service, instead of only configuring the firewall to be off.

answered on Server Fault Oct 17, 2009 by Massimo
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Just had the problem show up on ONE newly loaded Windows 7 machine. Everything comes up fine, works fine, then after an unknown period of time (a day or two), the machine gives the exact symptoms described above. One interesting note - even during these symptoms, I can go to a command prompt and PING the servername just fine.

One more side note: I was able to alleviate the problem by typing in... \servername.domainname.extension - then everything works just fine.

Odd.

answered on Server Fault Feb 22, 2011 by Fuzzy
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Yeah this is a weird issue, and it has been bugging me for weeks. I would love to know the fix for it. I have also noticed that I can browse by IP address.

answered on Server Fault Oct 2, 2009 by teh dave
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I've seen this a long time ago, in the Win 2000 days, when the time difference between the client and the server was off by more than 5 minutes. It gives you weird errors that makes you think it's a dns issue when it's really not.

Time Synchronization is highly important to Kerberos.

It may not be the problem but it's easy to check and easy to fix if they are off.

answered on Server Fault Oct 17, 2009 by Moose
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Do you still use wins and netbios? Maybe the netbios over tcp is disabled? When we finally shut wins off we had to go to fqdn, but then again we might be doing something wrong and don't know it.

answered on Server Fault Oct 17, 2009 by MikeJ
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BTW, why are you still on RC1?

The RTM Enterprise evaluation version is freely downloadable: http://technet.microsoft.com/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx.

answered on Server Fault Oct 17, 2009 by Massimo
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I have not been able to reproduce this issue since. Perhaps Microsoft has patched it. If it ever comes back I will update this answer with my solution.

answered on Server Fault Sep 16, 2010 by Joseph Sturtevant

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