accessing a domain share on a Vista Home Premium computer...

[Brad Pears]

We are an XP based organization for the most part and use Windwos 2000 and
Windwos 2003 servers. Our sales people use their own laptops to access our
server software using terminal services and recently several have upgraded
or purchased new Vista laptops. This is no big deal as RDP works just fine
to access our terminal servers still... .

However, one particular salesperson last week wanted to access some
documents on one of our Windows 2000 file shares from his local laptop. He
was unable to get there.

I went over and had a peek at his machine for him and I was unable to do so
as well. This user is running Vista Home Premium. Now, I basically know next
to nothing about Vista as of yet so I suspect that there is a way to do
this, I was just unable to figure it out...

I tried mapping a network drive to our domain file share using my domain
credentials (which is what you can do using the XP Home version which is
also not "domain" friendly) but it was unable to map the drive. Viewing the
network shows only his PC - which is kind of what I would have expected I
guess...

Can anyone give me any ideas as to what I should try or is it just not even
possible using this version of Vista? (can't imagine that...)

This particular machine connects to our internal LAN using a wireless
connection and can access our terminal server with no probs using RDP. The
network is set to "public" NOT private and they are obtaining a dynamic IP
address from our Win2K DHCP server no probs. I can ping any other machine in
the network with no probs either. The Vista firewall is currently off.

I do not know what else to look for...

Help!

Thanks, Brad

 

[Brad Pears]

Me again... I incorrectly stated in teh above post that the Vista laptop
network was configured as "public" when indeed it is configured as
"private". I should have also mentioned that "network discovery" is turned
on...

Thanks, Brad

 

[John Lee Brown]

Is his workgroup setup with the same name as your other computers.

 

[Brad Pears]

His machine is using the default "workgroup" and is not able to join a
domain. We have a Win2K domain here at work - where he is connecting. I can
understand that he wouldn't be able to see any "domain" computers when
browsing "network" from hsi Vista machine, but he should still be able to
supply credentials to map drives to domain computer network shares etc...

Brad

 

[Brad Pears]

PS... I keep forgetting to supply all the required info... I mentioned in
the above post that his machine is unable to join a domain - that is because
it is a Vista Home Premium machine - not becasue it could not actually join
our domain. I don't believe you can even join a domain until you get into
the "Business" level versions of Vista correct?

Brad

 

[Guest]

Correct; Business to join a Domain.

PS... I keep forgetting to supply all the required info... I mentioned in
the above post that his machine is unable to join a domain - that is because
it is a Vista Home Premium machine - not becasue it could not actually join
our domain. I don't believe you can even join a domain until you get into
the "Business" level versions of Vista correct?

Brad

 

[GTS]

You are correct that you should be able to map a network drive to your
domain file share using your domain credentials. (I have done so from
Vista home with no problem.) To map a drive with the users credentials, a
domain account with matching name and password is required (assuming the
share rights are for domain users). I have also had no problem doing this.
As you say, it works the same as XP Home. A matching workgroup name is not
actually required to map a share. As far as viewing the network, it might
help to enable NetBIOS.

When you try to map a share with your credentials in a command prompt, what
error code (if any) is reported? Are you certain there is no third party
firewall or other security program interfering?