Unable to map drive on seperate subnet of Windows 2008 Server

[Shawn Martin]

On our current Windows 2003 Server I'm able to map a drive to a shared
folder from a workstation from a different subnet. Even if this machine
is not a member of the Domain, I can add the servers IP address and
machine name to the hosts file. If I have a user account setup on the
server I can then pass the username and password credentials when
mapping the drive and everything is OK.

When migrating to the new server (Windows 2008 R2) I try to do the same
thing, it gives me the following error:

The network path \\servername\share could not be found.

Is there something I need to do in a Group Policy?

I've tried adding subnets under Active Directory Sites and Services to
no avail.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks

[Bill Kearney]

> The network path \\servername\share could not be found.

Try using the IP address and specifying the full user credentials:

\\ip.address.of.server\share /user:domain\username

Replace /user:domain\username with the appropriate domain or machine name.
As in, you have a machine called "someserver" on IP adress 1.2.3.4 with a
share named 'home' and it's not part of your current domain named
"somedomain". To connect to it you'd need to have an account on the
"someserver" machine, let's say that one's named 'shawn'. You'd use:

net use \\1.2.3.4\home /user:someserver\shawn

If you didn't specify the "someserver\shawn" credentials the connection
would be made with whatever credentials you're currently using on your
machine. Since the 'someserver' machine isn't part of the domain it's
likely going to reject the connection attempt. This is correct behavior for
it. There's an exception where the system will try to connect using the
same username and password, but don't rely on this. Just specify the full
credentials, that way you'll *know* what it's trying to use.

Be very careful about making edits to the HOSTS file. Those tend to get
forgotten about and come back to haunt you later. Better to get things
integrated into the DNS when possible. That way all the layers of client
software "just work". You can add hosts to an AD integrated DNS without the
machine being a member of the domain, even when they're in different
subnets. That's just DNS 101.

-Bill Kearney