SyntaxHighlighter

Monday, June 30, 2008

The infamous "\\computer is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network" error

I must have come across this stupid error a dosen times and it is often solved by simply changing the Windows machine's Network ID or by running the Network Connection Wizard thingy in the Control Panel -> Connections page.

This time though, we had a computer playing hardball and was only solved by doing the following (from PChuck's Network):

Download and install the Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit Tools.

Click Start | All Programs | Windows Resource Kit Tools | Command Shell.

Type these three lines, one at a time, at the command prompt. The ntrights
commands are case-sensitive, so type them exactly as shown. Note the "+r" in
the second one and the "-r" in the third one:

net user guest /active:yes
ntrights +r SeNetworkLogonRight -u Guest
ntrights -r SeDenyNetworkLogonRight -u Guest

And that solved our problems. Well for most guys. For some reason my Vista still did not want to connect. I changed my Network ID to be same, and whala! It worked! This is a bit peculiar considering that I was able to connect across different Network ID's on my previous XP machine. I don't have time to double check and validate that now though.

2 comments:

Gaspard said...

Also, if you can't browse by name, only IP address:

Thanks again to Microsoft for not making a GUI setting for an option that causes home networking to not work correctly!!

anyway read what this guy has to say:
http://www.richardcleaver.com/?p=15

Also this is Microsoft's page on the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903267

the short of it is if the setting of your DHCP NodeType is set to 2 then your home (workgroup, no DNS server) networking will never work correctly.

You can check it by typing ipconfig /all at the command prompt and you will see:


Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Computername
Primary Dns Suffix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Peer-to-peer

...


If the Node Type is Peer-to-peer IT WILL NOT WORK!!!

To reset it to Broadcast or hybrid or one of the other ones that works, you need to change 2 keys in the registry.

Start > Run > regedit

Find the key(s):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Netbt\Parameters

* DhcpNodeType
* NodeType


These are the 2 key names if either exist, and are set to 2 then you are screwed... you can delete the keys which will set them to default of 1... or you can set them to (1 or 4 or 8) any of which should work...

The NodeType one if existing will override the DhcpNodeType one which is set automatically upon joining certain networks (hence the problem).

Also after changing the value you need to restart for it to take effect.

Read the link I put to Richard Cleaver's blog, that explains the settings in detail.

Hope to help.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the comments G.