Network Prob - resolving names

Factual Questions
1

I work from home, connecting to my office via a VPN. (Using Windows XP Professional). Until yesterday, I had my TCP/IP set to Obtain the DNS address automatically, and everything worked fine. Yesterday, I stopped being able to connect to various machines, and my IT guy had me enter the DNS addresses. This enabled me to access one additional machine by name (my company Exchange server), but all the rest are still not allowing me access. When I double-click the given machine’s name in an Explorer window, it tells me “X:\SomeDiectrory (the directories on this machine all represent shortcuts to other machines - that’s why I don’t have the option of liking to them using the numeric IP address) is not accessible. The network path was not found.”

I don’t want to have to bring my computer in to the office to diagnose this. It’s got to be something on my computer, because there’s another telecommuter in the company, and she has no trouble. Are any of you folks network gurus who might know what on my machine can be causing this effect, and what I need to change to fix it?

Thanks,

2

One thing that might help is adding all of the DNS servers to the TCP/IP properties. How computer savy are you? Are you comfortable doing command-line stuff? Here are some brief instructions that assume you are somewhat savy:

  • Write down the DNS servers that the IT guy had you enter.
  • Set your VPN TCP/IP settings back to get the DNS automatically.
  • VPN in to work.
  • Open a cmd window.
  • Type ipconfig /all
  • Copy down the DNS servers that are automatically assigned.
  • Disconnect VPN.
  • Edit your VPN TCP/IP settings and manually assign all of the DNS servers (the ones automatically assigned and the one that the IT guy gave you). If you have more than two servers, you need to use the Advanced tab.

Also, two side notes:

  • If you need a DNS server to access a single machine, you can edit your hosts file and add that machine. It won’t be dynamic, but it should be fine.
  • If you can’t get to a machine by name, but you know the machine’s IP address, you can still get to it. From the Start->Run, then type: explorer \ipaddress.

I realize these instructions may be a little complicated. Let me know and I can provide more detail and spell them out more.

3

Thanks for the advice. As it turns out, my IT guys discovered the problem: their DCHP (?) server had shut down and they didn’t realize it…I was the only one who was automatically accessing it, apparently. So it had nothing to do with my computer settings at all.

Thanks!