[unknowndevice]

I'm in the IT department at my company, and I have a customer who has a strange problem on a Windows XP laptop. Basically, DNS name resolution works from a command line but not from Windows Explorer. For example, if you go to a command line and type:

ping server01

you can ping server01 just fine, but if you open a Windows Explorer window and type:

\\server01

in the field at the top of the window (can't remember what it's called) you get an error, something like "windows cannot access \\server01" (i'm on my Vista computer now, so i'm not sure that's the exact error on XP, but you get the jist).

however, if you try this in the same field in the same Windows Explorer window:

\\10.55.66.77

(assuming that 10.55.66.77 is the IP address for server01), you get to server01 just fine.

I should note that this is a customer who is notorious for installing all sorts of unauthorized software and generally tinkering with things. Basically, a classic "knows enough to be dangerous" type, who quite likely broke something while playing techy with his laptop. I'm trying to get his local admin privileges revoked, but for now, I'm hoping to figure this problem out without having to rebuild his laptop yet again.

Things I've already tried:

-Logging into this laptop under my Windows profile (I get the same result)
-gpupdate
-sfc.exe /scannow
-Verified that his WINS server info seems to be correct.

I think this customer is on XP SP2, so it just occurred to me to try updating him to SP3. Maybe that will fix what seems to be a Windows Explorer problem.

Anyway, if anyone else has any other ideas, please let me know.

[Squashman]

Is NetBios enabled?

[Mumbodog]

1. make sure the PC is in the same workgroup or domain.

2. work around, add the server name and IP to the LMhosts file.

3. Set up a limited account for the problem user

[tuben]

If you open a command prompt and type
ipconfig /all

Do you get a physical address or is this line missing?

Had a similiar problem with an hp laptop, which i installed vista on from scratch and downloaded driver package from hp's website. I got a valid IP from dhcp but couldn't resolve addresses outside the sub-net. It resultet in some regediting and adding one or a few rows with physical address set to random address.

Otherwise try download new network drivers for the ethernet controller.