Problems With Network Drives

[Guest]

Hi all,

Ok, I'm pounding my head against a wall in frustration with a certain aspect
of Vista. I'm the MIS Manager for a large company and am evaluating Vista as
a potential upgrade to some of our desktops. I've been able to get everything
I need to work in Vista save one thing. We're on a domain here, and when I
log into XP, I use my username/password for the domain to log into my laptop.
From there I have all the access I need to pull up, change, save and create
files to our network drives. Now herein lies my problem. I cannot do this in
Vista. When I log in to our domain, using the same credentials I use in XP,
and try to work with a network file, I can access the drives just fine, but
Vista opens them up as read-only files, will not allow me to save changes to
the network drives and will not allow me to save new files to the network. I
keep getting the same error message - that I do not have sufficient rights to
perform those actions and that I need to contact my system administrator.
Well, I AM the administrator and my login/password has complete access rights
to everything on our network, but not in Vista. Can anyone help me out here?

The machine I'm using is in a dual-boot config, with one being XP and the
other Vista. As I said above, I have no problems when I boot into XP, but
when I boot into Vista I am not allowed to make changes to network files. I
was able to successfully add the Vista boot to our domain.

Any help would be appreciated!!! If I can't get this resolved, I'm going to
recommend against upgrading to Vista.

We're running Server 2003 as our main server platform.

Thanks!!!!

 

[OKuma]

MVeter,

Stupid question, this Vista machine has been registered on your domain?

If you UNC to the share, can you write files to the drive?

Have you check the event log on your Vista machine to see if you have any
autoenrollment errors?

OKuma

 

[Guest]

Hi OKuma,

Thanks for the reply!!

The funny thing here is, is that if I log into Vista using my system
administrator login and password then I can do whatever I need to do just
fine. All files open up normally, I can edit, create new, etc without any
problems. However, when I use my own login, which has all the same rights as
the administrative login, then I cannot do any of that. So yes, the machine
is registered on the domain. Nothing shows on the event log. The same trouble
occurs when I UNC over to the share and try to change anything. Works fine
when I'm logged in as the system admin, but not when I'm logged in under my
initials.

In XP, everything works as it should, since my initials carry the same
system rights as the administrator login. This problem with Vista won't just
be a worry for me. All of our users have access to their own network drives
and other shared directores. In XP, they can maneuver around as they need to,
but if we switch to Vista, that functionality will go away. It's as if Vista
refuses to acknowledge security rights from our main server, other than for
the administrator...

Any ideas???

 

[Kerry Brown]

Did you specifically join the Vista computer to the domain? Are the DNS
settings correct on the Vista computer? For all intents and purposes when
you boot Vista you are using a different computer. Make sure it has a
different computer name from when you boot to XP. Make sure that a domain
DNS server is the only DNS server in the TCP/IP properties. If you have a
WINS server make sure Vista is set to use it. Once all the preceding is in
place join the computer to the domain. Confirm that the Vista computer name
shows up in the correct OU.

If the Vista computer is already joined to the domain then is it a NT, win2k
or win2003 domain? Post the results of ipconfig /all from XP and Vista.

 

[OKuma]

Try this.

Logon with your domain account on the Vista Machine
On the server that contains the shares, do a \\<ServerName>\c$ to
authenticate with the root of that machine
Then see if you can do adds, moves, and changes to the shares.

OKuma

 

[Guest]

Hi Kerry,

Yes, the Vista computer is joined to the domain using a different computer
name than the XP boot portion. I made sure to take care of all that when I
first loaded Vista. All of the DNS settings are correct and right now we
don't use WINS, so that's not an issue.

The TCP/IP settings are accurate as well.

The Vista boot has been a successful domain add since I first installed it.
I've had no problems with other domain tasks (like RDP into our main file
server using an internal IP, etc).

The server platform is Server 2003.

A little add-on here... i don't know WHY this worked, just that it did... I
deleted the mapped network drive I wanted access to and then re-mapped it.
After I had done that everything started working fine. I can now access all
of my network files across the entire domain with full edit rights...

So, a follow-up question... What happened there??? I tweaked some settings
in Server 2003, but I highly doubt that what I did affected my ability to
have more than read-only access to network files. I personally like Vista,
and think it would work well for some of our desktop users, but am hesistant
to promote an upgrade until I have an understanding as to what caused my
network access issues...

Thanks!!!

 

[Guest]

Hi OKuma,

Yes, I can authenticate to the server root just fine, and edit/add/delete
files.

The problem has resovled itself, though. This may be purely coincidental,
but I don't believe in coincidences with computers, so probably not... Last
night before I left I deleted all of my mapped drives and re-mapped them.
Since I've done that I've had no problems with full access... So something
happened, but I've no real idea as to what. I can maneuver around the domain
just like I was able to in an XP boot.

I gotta tell you, working with Microsoft products sometimes makes me feel
like Alice falling down the rabbit hole...

 

[Kerry Brown]

I've seen similar problems in XP when credentials get mixed up. I usually
use "net use * /delete" to delete all mappings and start over again.

I like Vista and have figured out how to use it on my own network. I don't
recommend deploying it on a production network at this point. You may want
to deploy it for yourself for learning and possibly a couple of early
adopter/techie users for testing. Networking, DNS, and authentication have
changed enough that some past practices may bite you unexpectedly. Once you
get the kinks worked out and have a few users comfortable with it and
running smoothly you can re-evaluate deploying it to a wider audience.