Hey all,
As many points as i can possibly give to whoever answers this!
I've recently taken over IT for a company. The last guy was let go. Upon being let go, he was asked to remove his own access to the network/server. The problem is, some "coincidental" mishaps occured upon his leaving.
I will describe in depth below but the two key symptoms were
1. that the business owners active directory account was deleted which disconnected his email as they are using exchange server on the same system. The email account may have been deleted also, but not purged so I was able to recover by creating a user account for him again and connecting the old mailbox to it.
2. and this is the one thats had me stumped all day, the server shares are inaccessible.
They are running:
A single server environment-
Windows 2003 SBS domain
Active directory
Exchange Server
DHCP
Domain Controller
WINS
DNS?
All clients are XP
My initial theory is that this is something simple because of the fact that the "coincidence" with the email was an easy fix. I am suspicious that this was intentional but have no proof and this may very well be coincidental.
Here are the symptoms:
server is named "exchange" and when accessing "exchange", you get one of 2 errors depending on where you access from. From browser using "\\exchange", it merely says it cannot find it or doesnt recognize the name. However, when accessing from network places, the error is more like cannot access, contact admin... "arithmetic result exceeded 32 bits"
The strange thing is when accessing from non domain computers, aka my laptop, \\exchange is available, and if I just plug in the login info, i go right to the shared folders. When I say 'non domain' I mean i login as users that are not active directory users, such as my laptop account, or even machine user accounts that are only on an individual computer and not active directory. So i was able to get in fine with my laptop....
If I ping "exchange" while logged in under an active directory account, it gives me an interenal LAN IP address, which is the internal static address for the server. If, on that same computer, I ping exchange while logged in under a non active directory account, I get the external WAN IP of the server.
So, really the problem is with active directory accounts - aka members of the domain, right. I went ahead and plugged in the LAN ip of the server with \\ (\\192.168.x.x) and it took me straight to the shared folders of the server.
This leads me to think that the servers name isnt being resolved or broadcasted or something. At this point, things sort of venture into a gray area for me. I'm not sure if the machine is having problems with its DNS or if it runs like regular windows using NetBios.
Anyway, if you guys can help me get to where the name "exchange" or \\exchange brings up the shared folders again, I'd really appreciate it.
PS The only thing i did was fix the mail and reboot the server. It did take forever to reboot tho.
Thanks!
