Unsolved Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS
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Two of my users had issues lately about missing drive mappings. Turned out that they can't resolve DFS sometimes.
- No issues for years, no recent direct or indirect changes (last change: ~8 months ago)
- Drive mapping via GPO/GPP
- All DFS links do point to the same fileserver
- Target fileserver can be resolved and accessed directly (\\fileserver) without issues
- \\domain can be resolved (sure...) and accessed, but \\domain\dfs-root is missing for these clients
- DNS OK
- Affected client OS (so far): Win7 Pro SP1, all updates applied
- Not hardware related (got the issue on two totally different machines)
- A reboot does help at times, but I bet this more due to some cache timeout / replication cycle or whatever.
I'll try the obvious stuff tomorrow, like disabling the NICs power saving and client cache flushing:
dfstutil /pktflushSource: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776211(v=ws.10).aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396
But what is causing this?
I have a bunch of identical client machines (same hardware, same image, same policies, same software, same patchlevel - heck, even same purchase date) and while nearly all of them are working perfectly fine, one is failing. Same for the other affected machine, 1 out of 5 is failing.
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Are all of them on the same site? Do they use the same DNS server for resolution?
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I just had this same issue with a user over seas.
I'll have to give this a try with her system tomorrow.
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@Kelly said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
Are all of them on the same site? Do they use the same DNS server for resolution?
DC, DFS and fileserver are all on the same subnet, so yes, same site.
Yes, they are using DNS and it's working perfectly fine
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@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
I just had this same issue with a user over seas.
I'll have to give this a try with her system tomorrow.
You mean the cache flushing?
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Yeah, the user was able to get to the share using the IP, but not dns name.
Other shares worked just fine via DNS.
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@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
Yeah, the user was able to get to the share using the IP, but not dns name.
Other shares worked just fine via DNS.
Erm, not sure if we are talking about the same thing
Let us use these terms:
- Domain: acme.local
- Fileserver: filer-1, FQDN: filer-1.acme.local
- DFS-root: acme.local\dfsroot1
- DFS-Links: acme.local\dfsroot1\link1, acme.local\dfsroot1\link2
My users can't see acme.local\dfsroot1, but can access the fileserver at \\filer-1\share-behind-link1
But your user can't see acme.local at all? That would be some serious DNS issue
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No no
She can access all of our file servers, by IP, and all but 1 by DNS name.
So filer1, filer2 work fine to access the share as \filer1\share1 or \filer2\share1
But for filer3 she can only access it via \ipaddress\share
Of course this probably doesn't help this is the first time she's ever used the VPN. .
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@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
No no
She can access all of our file servers, by IP, and all but 1 by DNS name.
So filer1, filer2 work fine to access the share as \filer1\share1 or \filer2\share1
But for filer3 she can only access it via \ipaddress\share
Of course this probably doesn't help this is the first time she's ever used the VPN. .
Roaming user? E.g. notebook which is sometimes onsite and sometimes offsite via VPN? Given the DNS AAAA/A/CNAME record for your filer is ok, it could be a DNS caching issue.
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I wonder if thwr's issue is cached credentials in Windows.
Control Panel > Credential Manager
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thwr, any errors in either the file server logs or the DFS root logs?
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@thwr said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
No no
She can access all of our file servers, by IP, and all but 1 by DNS name.
So filer1, filer2 work fine to access the share as \filer1\share1 or \filer2\share1
But for filer3 she can only access it via \ipaddress\share
Of course this probably doesn't help this is the first time she's ever used the VPN. .
Roaming user? E.g. notebook which is sometimes onsite and sometimes offsite via VPN? Given the DNS AAAA/A/CNAME record for your filer is ok, it could be a DNS caching issue.
That sounds suspiciously as though the DNS records for that filer are not quite right. If you can hit 3 of 4 servers by hostname, DNS probably isn't the issue. Something to do with the record on that 4th server seems very likely.
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@Dashrender said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
thwr, any errors in either the file server logs or the DFS root logs?
Have seen nothing. Probably not cached credentials, but I'll check that.
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@art_of_shred It probably is a DNS issue of some sort (it was 8PM her time) so I didn't care to dig into it when she's off.
I just gave her a favorite to the filer via IP so she could do what she needed for the evening.
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@thwr said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@Dashrender said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
thwr, any errors in either the file server logs or the DFS root logs?
Have seen nothing. Probably not cached credentials, but I'll check that.
You don't happen to have anything weird like a Pertino adapter throwing a wrench into the mix, do you?
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@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@art_of_shred It probably is a DNS issue of some sort (it was 8PM her time) so I didn't care to dig into it when she's off.
I just gave her a favorite to the filer via IP so she could do what she needed for the evening.
Yeah, but that can turn back at you once the filer gets a new IP for whatever reason.
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@thwr said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@art_of_shred It probably is a DNS issue of some sort (it was 8PM her time) so I didn't care to dig into it when she's off.
I just gave her a favorite to the filer via IP so she could do what she needed for the evening.
Yeah, but that can turn back at you once the filer gets a new IP for whatever reason.
The filer is statically assigned, so it is a user system issue, I just didn't want to take 2 hours to investigate it.
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@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@thwr said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@DustinB3403 said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
@art_of_shred It probably is a DNS issue of some sort (it was 8PM her time) so I didn't care to dig into it when she's off.
I just gave her a favorite to the filer via IP so she could do what she needed for the evening.
Yeah, but that can turn back at you once the filer gets a new IP for whatever reason.
The filer is statically assigned, so it is a user system issue, I just didn't want to take 2 hours to investigate it.
Just saying.
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Both clients were able to see the DFS root again this morning - without even touching them.
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@thwr said in Few Windows clients randomly can't resolve DFS:
Both clients were able to see the DFS root again this morning - without even touching them.
How annoying.
