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Can't access DFS 2008 R2 namespace from a couple of machines

Question

Tuesday, July 12, 2011 5:06 PM

I am trying to troubleshoot an issue with a particular Win 7 x64 bit client.  I am logged into this (I am a domain admin) and I cannot access a DFS share from this machine.  I get an Access is Denied error.  This happens only from a couple of machines.  I can acces the DFS shares from any other machine no problem.  I found some hotfix KB983620 which didn't help.  If you have any ideas how I can troubleshoot i'm all ears. 

I've tried other machines in the same site - no issues
I've tried issues 'dfsutil /spcInfo' 'dfsutil 'pktinfo' all look normal (I found a microsoft KB article for troubleshooting DFS - all these results were normal)
Checked replication between DC's - all is fine.
I can access via \DC-name\dfsroot and \UNCofDFS_server\dfsroot - I only cannot access via \domain.com\dfsroot

Any help is greatly appreciated. I'm trying to refrain from rebuilding these machines as they are engineering machines.

Zach

Zach Smith

All replies (9)

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 12:50 PM âś…Answered | 3 votes

If anyone is interested I figured out the problem. 

Open control panel - open 'sync center' DIsable offline files.  Reboot.

Zach

Zach Smith

Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:47 PM

Hello,

When you type in \domain.com what folders do you see?

Isaac Oben MCITP:EA, MCSE,MCC View my MCP Certifications

Thursday, July 14, 2011 6:03 PM

I see a DFS root 'files' , 'NETLOGON', 'SYSVOL'  I do have other DFS shares taht I dont see...Zach Smith

Friday, July 15, 2011 12:20 PM

And it's probably worth mentioning that the 'files' dfs share is the one in question.  I see it from the machine - but just cannot browse to it.Zach Smith

Saturday, July 16, 2011 8:04 AM

Hello Zach,

Can you please check if you have granted proper access permission on the DFS namespace for the users?

Thanks and Regards
Scorpio_Milo
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Monday, July 18, 2011 8:12 AM

Hi,

Whether the computers in problem are in same site as others? You can have a test to set a static IP address on a problem computer with a health one (copy from another computer) to see the result.

Meanwhile, whether Offline Files is enabled on target computer? If so, test to disable the following group policy on clients:

Computer Config-->Admin Templates-->Netowrk-->Offline files

Allow or disallow use of the offline files feature
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Monday, July 18, 2011 8:48 PM

Thank you for the responses.

@Scorpoio_Milo - I am testing this on an off-site machine and I am in the domain admin group and can access the DFS drive with full permissions on my machine and any other enterprise machine.

@Shaon - The computer in question is in a different site than myself and then the DFS share's primary/secondary server.  I have tried using a different VLAN from the site without issue.  I have also logged onto the servers at this site without issue.  I only have issues accessing the drive from this particular machine.  I am about to just reformat the OS but thought I'd research to see if this can be resolved without doing so as this is an Engineering workstation and there is a lot of software installed on this machine.  Reinstalling will be quite time consuming and counter productive for some engineers.  Also - I have checked the GP on the machine and the 'offline Files' settings are all set to 'Not Configured'  I have confirmed with several other machines that are not experiencing any issues and the settings are the same.

Thanks again for the help.

Zach

Zach Smith

Wednesday, February 12, 2014 5:35 PM

I found this extremely useful today, but it's relevant to Windows 8/8.1 despite the age of the thread.

Some of our developers were having issues with folders in their My Doc's folder simply not opening when you double click on it.  No errors or anything, you double click and nothing happens.  Another symptom here was that nothing in the DFS heirarchy could be found, not even at the root. 

Our domain is at 2008r2 functionality, and it seems as though we have some Windows 8 computers not pulling GP correctly (anticipated).  I found that these machines were not setting offline files to "disabled" as they were supposed to.  Disabling offline files manually and rebooting worked.  The DFS structure was browsable after rebooting as well.

Friday, June 26, 2020 2:39 PM

This is even relevant for Windows 10. I need to get rid of sync center.