LMHOSTS names are not usable in Windows Explorer on Windows XP

Thanks for the suggestions, but we've been fairly thorough in investigating the basics.

We have put the name in both the hosts and the lmhosts file in the etc directory, using the right syntax. We have included the #PRE directive in the lmhosts file, and verified using nbtstat -c that the entry has been cached and is correct.

We have also tried putting the name in just the lmhosts file. Since we can ping the name as well as see it in the cache, we are confident that the syntax and file naming is correct.

This seems to be a problem where something is preventing a lmhosts name from operating in the Windows Explorer layers the same way it does in standard TCP/IP layers. (Is there an XP setting that does what the old Windows NT "Use DNS for Windows name resolution" setting did?)

Thanks, johnb6767. I suspect simply shifting the priorities lower won't resolve the problem, but perhaps changing their order might help.

Although that brings up the question of why, if all sources are being searched, is Windows Explorer not finding a name? Is there another list of name providers for Explorer that has omitted hosts/lmhosts?

[As an additional piece of information, we have Novell in our environment, but we've removed it from the workstation we are using, and the server we are trying to reach has never had anything to do with Novell. However, I wouldn't rule out that Novell may have changed something that it's uninstall doesn't revert.]

It took me awhile to find the bindings properties (it was much more obvious in Windows 2000 than it is in XP), but I don't currently have access to the machine with the LMHOSTS configuration, so I'll post the info once I get at it.

Thanks for the question/suggestion.

The Network Connections "Advanced Settings" shows "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" and "Client for Microsoft Networks", both with "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" as the only binding.

On the Provider Order tab, the Network Providers listed are "Microsoft Windows Network" and "VMWare Shared Folders". (Our primary testbed for doing the LMHOSTS config testing is a VMWare slice, but we see similar behavior on standard workstations.)

Any further ideas on how to get Windows Explorer to use LMHOSTS (or HOSTS) lines to find a server?

Followup on a couple of previous comments...
The host resolution order/priority didn't have any effect.
WINS Proxy is not enabled, but our default configuration uses primary/secondary WINS servers. We've tried a ton of different configurations including getting rid of the WINS servers, without success.
IP address connections have worked, but aren't a solution (the reason we wanted to use the name is to override where a server name is pointing -- temporarily point it at a test server to validate some new software, and then remove the name override to have it point to the real server without reconfiguring the name it is using).

Thanks for the ideas. I am convinced that there is something in our Windows environment that is preventing the name override from working, but we don't have time to continue our battle to remove that restriction. I'll split the points.