Hi all-
My workplace accesses an outside vendors WinNT4 servers (one specific share on these servers) by using their preferred VPN client, the AT&T Global Network Client. The pc we're doing this on is a Dell GX150 running Windows 2000 Pro SP4, fully patched. In the past this system's worked fine with this at&t client and we've been able to connect to their servers and specifically, this share.
The order of connecting is like this: user logs into our local domain and authenticates -->once logged on they double click the AT&T client icon and enters pass for VPN client and connects -->VPN connection establishes connection and they then click on an icon we created that's a shortcut to both the server and the share. This shortcut is \\ipaddress\sharename. We use the IP since the speed over the VPN is rather slow (read painful) and we never had any luck using server names, but we able to see the server by IP, no problem. The icon drops my user directly into the server share and directly to the file they want to download.
About 3 weeks ago or so my user's were no longer able to connect to the vendors servers. They were able to get onto VPN and are still able to ping the server's IP address. When they click on the shortcut to get to the server, after a very long pause we get the error message that "There are currently no logon servers available to service the login request." No username and password prompt is presented at all.
I can do a search for the server while connected to the VPN and can find the server by IP, but if I double click on the server's icon I get the same error re: logon servers. I can also ping the server no problem.
I looked this up on google.com and the error points to WINS issues which to me, says something fishy's up with their servers or their routing. The thing is, they got one of their people to bring in their WinXP pro laptop and I config'd it for our network and it worked just fine. No issues connecting to this same server at all.
No new apps had been installed on my clients recently. They have been updated for blaster and various other MS patches.
The one significant thing that has happened on our end of things has been a move to Active Directory. To this end, the only changes that have been made are the addition of a few new DNS servers, a new primary DNS suffix (which was also added to the search order). Our domain name has not changed. Our clients do not belong to their domain though, so I don't think this is the issue either.
I just reimaged one of my clients that used to be able to connect to this outside server just to see if that would help. Same issue, same error message with the client having been freshly installed on a fresh machine.
My thoughts re: the possible issue are this:
1) MS released some patch that I installed that's mucked up something. (to this end, I did install and remove their IPSEC patch - 818043 just in case that was causing issues).
2) My school has blocked some ports that are needed to contact this vendor's servers. - I know we are blocking Port 135 incoming and port 80 incoming. Port blocking on our end doesn't seem the likely cause though since the 3rd parties device was able to connect on our network to their server.
3) Maybe something on our end is timing out as we try and connect to their domain controllers which would authenticate our clients?
Re: possible solution ideas, I was wondering if their might be a way to use a LMHost file to "point" our client to their server and solve the issue if WINS resolution is the problem. Their VPN client pushes network settings onto our machines, so they should have the addresses to accomplish what they need to accomplish, but perhaps this might be a brute force solution?
Beyond this I'm at a loss. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Lee
