how to access a server from a PC which is part of workgroup

Find out the IP address of the server and connect to that. When you enter the user credentials, use a domain based user for access, e.g. DOMAIN\USERID instead of USERID in the User Name field.

thanks kev, i know the ip address should i enter the ip like below in the run command
\\11.22.33.44
i am entering my details like this
username: domainname.local\userid (with or without local no luck)
password: xxxxx

connect to - 11.22.33.44
username - domainname\username
password - xxxxxxx

oh, and, you need to use a username that is either and administrator of the server or has been given permissions to login via remote desktop

What you can do is the following.

Share the folder on the laptop you want to see on the other computrer in your domain, share it to EVERYONE.

now type on the computer in your domain \\COMPUTERNAME or the IP in a browser. Than you see all the shared folders on that computer you have access to.

The machine has to have a password or you will not be able to connect

There needs be active shares on the machine also.

Once these are in place, then you need to type the following

\\computername\sharename

The username and password you put in has to have privelidges to the shared resource and needs to be placed in the following format ;

user : computername\username
password: password

as this is not on the domain and the resources are local ones accessed from somewhere other than the local realm, you must use the local computername before the username as the above format suggests.

This will work

You have few options.

1) on share located on server add to share security "Everyone" group with full control and on each main resource node on Security tab "Everyone" with at least read&execute.

2) create the same local user account on server with the same password as on XP, grant this user access to resources

Regards,
Krzysztof

@Coast-IT: This is a domain environment, it's only the laptop that is not joined to the domain, therefore a domain account should be used to access the server. :)

oops....misread that - thought it was remote desktop....

ok guys, just back from lunch and tried all the suggestions above but nothing is working

my user id is part of domain admin,
data is already shared and stored on the server and i need to access this data from my laptop

pete, done your way but no joy. should i include .local with domain name in username field?

There should be no need to fully qualify the domain name, and having re-read the info you have initially it seems there must be a different issue, as it's not accepting the credentials when you enter them manually anyway...

Has your laptop successfully picked up your usual DHCP config? Such as DNS etc?

Can you test that you can successfully resolve the domain name via DNS - Just run the following from a command prompt on your laptop:

nslookup domainname.local

If it successfully resolves to one of your domain controllers (technically it should display all domain controller IP addresses).

If it can't even resolve the domain, then putting DomainName\Username will be meaningless to it!

Let me know?

Pete

yes the laptop has received the ip address etc from the server, and i can use internet on my laptop as well.

i've tried your nslookup cmd and it is showing me 4 different ip addresses, 3 belongs to our network but the fourth one i dont recognise.

Ok, just to change tactics as something isn't making sense here...

Can you try creating a brand new folder anywhere on this same server, share it, give everyone full control in share perms and everyone full control in NTFS perms. Leave the folder empty, it's purely to see if you can get to it...

Then try mapping to that share from your laptop, and see what happens?

Let me know if it's any different from what you get at the moment?

OK I've created a folder from a pc which is  part of a domain , assign full share permission to everyone, and in the security tab add an entry "everyone" and assign full access to it, but the problem is when i try to access the folder or server from laptop (which is not part of domain) i get the same pop-up window asking me to enter user-name and password. what should i do now,

i am off from work now and will be home in around 4 hours (9:00pm GMT) then i'll be able to reply you back. i will have remote access of both laptop and server.

thanks

Yes I understand the problem, just trying to get a better fix on what's actually happening...

So you created the folder, shared it and set permissions, and then you tried connecting to the share you just created from your laptop yes? And you got the same prompt? And did it allow you through when you enter valid domain credentials?

Or did it do exactly the same thing as the original share you've been trying to access?

Pete

hi pete, yes i created and shared as you said but i tried to access it in the following way
run cmd,
\\servername
and the same prompt appears again

Does the domain have IPC$ share disabled? If you're just trying to browse \\servername with no sharename then you'll be trying to enumerate using IPC$ ie. it'll try to show all the sares available on the 'server'. Try going straight to the sharename with \\servername\sharename

Run Setup small or office network.

lick next  next workgroup keep same MS Home or anything else NEXT

Turn on file sharing..

Restart and use it will work with Domian\username and password method.

Run Setup small or office network.

 is available if u open My Network Places

hi,
ok surprisingly i am now able to access the file server using the following way (and its the same way i was trying for ages, so i dont know why server is letting me access it now)
in run command i typed " \\server1" (without quotes)
got the prompt asking for user-name and password which i entered like below

domain-name\ user-name
my-password

and was able to see the shares on the server and access them. As ocanda_techguy mentioned that maybe i entered the wrong credentials so many times that server blocked my access for a short while and later on allowed me the access but i don't know for sure if this is the reason.

Good stuff! I reckon that now it's allowing you access you could easily store the credentials used to stop the prompt appearing (at least until the domain account password expires) in the first place.

I can't think of anything else it could be except the blocked access, as I know you can connect fine to domain machines from non-domain machines under normal circumstaces...

Anyways, it seems to be working now, so all is good! :)

Pete

yup
or if other/guests creds were used first, those are held and used for all other attempts at the same server machine until all connections released/rebooted.  And printers can be tricky that way because logging off does not necessarily disconnect them.

experts, lets assume  that server denied me the access because i entered the wrong user-name/password and my id was blocked for a while, i mean how can we check it and enabled it straight-away because it this particular instance i was able to weight until the problem resolved but some other time it can an urgent problem.

thanks

Since you can't connect to the server you likely cannot connect to it with MMC from the workstation but if you go to the server and launch MMC you'll get some clues by a) checking Security event log to see failes authentication attempts originating from that workstation b) User management to see if account is locked-out.  You could then i) alter the acount locked-out disable state
(but you'll risk just repeating the process if)
and/or
c) if it's the you cannot be connected with two different credentials and it's already connected with an account of lower/guest credential (such as to public everyone shares and/or printers) you can check the open shares for current sessions/connections from that workstation (or check network connections at the client)
To see how many attempts result in the security policy locking out, and then for how long, see the Local Policy Editor security settings on the server.
Scenario was less of a problem on Server NT/2000 but became frequently ocurring on 2003 due to the enhanced default security settings, which are important and useful due to Internet access vulnerabilities.

thank you for your help, if you are not happy with the points allocation let me know and i'll correct it.