Can't connect to network drive...

Quick question:

I'm at my new job today, and trying to make a good impression by solving some of their networking issues on the first day. They have just installed a new 'storage' server here, and it seems to be giving lots of people connection issues.

Now, me and my friend started working here today. He typed in the connection info and was allowed to connect to the storage server immediately, but I entered in the same information and was given this message:

"<drive> is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

The Network path was not found."

There are a few other people in the office that have never been able to connect to the storage server, so I am thinking it must be a setting or hardware thing that has been overlooked. I have checked myself, and I am an administrator on the server, and the techy says that there are no permissions required. Does anyone have any idea of how I can troubleshoot this?

Thanks in advance for any help, let me know if there is any other info I need to give. Not sure what else to type.

--Kibb

 

Thanks for the quick reply Tim,

If I go under 'Entire Network', it shows that the drive is there. When I click on the shortcut in the Entire Network area to go to the storage drive, it gives me the same error message. So I think it can map to the server, if I understand what you're saying. (Never been much of a network knowitall.)

There is no real login from what I have seen. We all have our own personal server accounts that we log into for work, but to connect to the storage drive, you just need to enter the location IP and it SHOULD go. It works for most people, but some people like me are stuck.

Thanks again, let me know what else I can do,

--Kibb

 

Well, its a local ip (192.168.1.x), so its not really remote, it's just connecting to a computer on the network it seems.

Even though I can see the drive on the 'entire network' area, it won't let me right-click and map it, or map it through 'Map Network Drive'.

--Kibb

 

There is actually no general login for the domain, we all have our own accounts (if that is what you mean). There is no password or login required for the server, other people have been able to just click on it and gain access.

I feel like I'm missing a tiny little detail or something that will just unlock this problem and let me get on with my work, but it escapes me.

I was reading about this problem through google and people had this problem, but it had to do with Firewalls and stuff (which we have none of as far as I can tell). Permissions and all that, but I'm an administrator.

Hmm..

--Kibb

 

Sorry, was away for a few days and didn't follow up.

Yes, I just checked those settings and both are present on my LAN network setup. I'll compare my settings to my coworker right beside me and see if that shows anything.

Thanks again,

--Kibb

 

Are these other users in the same group that your user accounts are in?
To me it sounds exactly like a permissions issue.

 

I assume they would be. I saw myself be set to administrator, and the other people that are set as administrators don't seem to have a problem. There are 3 people here who have never been able to connect yet, but I think you are right about some kind of permissions problem.

I am an administrator, and my coworker beside me seems to be a normal user. He can get on, I can't. I will check with the others soon, hopefully.

Thanks in advance,

--K

 

You said you've tried going into "My Computer" and typing "\\[servername or ip address]" (without qoutation marks of course) and it gives you the same error message?

Can you ping the server?

Let me ask you this.....do you have SP2 on your computer? If you do, and you've already tried doing what I just told you to do, try uninstalling SP2 and then go back into my computer and type in "\\[servername or ip address] and then hit "ENTER" after you've typed that. I've had this problem on some networks before where the client computer could ping the server, but people always got the same error message that you're getting when they tried to access the server. 9 times out of 10 an issue with SP2 was not allowing them to browse the Local Area Network. I uninstalled (and later reinstalled after they were working) SP2 and the could browse the network drives.

 

Before going so far as uninstalling anything, let's try this thought, b/c I had a very similar problem recently, trying to gain access to an already-shared external USB drive across my LAN, with similar roadblocks. I get the impression this is an XP-based peer-to-peer network that's only looking to share resources (files & folders) on a common machine ("server"), and not an enterprise-type set-up. If so, on the "server", in Windows Explorer, right-click on the drive in question, and select Sharing & Security. On the Security tab therein, see if you can make some observations as to the permissions the various users and groups listed there currently hold. May be as simple as changing a few Denys to Allows.