net use command over dial up on Vista

we have several vist pc's coming into the help desk that can not map a
network drive over a dial up connection. We allow the pc's to directly dial
into us and map drives. All other Microsoft OS's can use the net use command
or manually mapping drives process and map drive but not Vista on dial up.
With the same PC that can not map a drive on dial up, connecting to the
Internet over broadband and establishing a VPN connection allows mapping
drives.

Does anyone have any clues as to how to fix this issue?

"CrC" <> wrote ...
> we have several vist pc's coming into the help desk that can not map a
> network drive over a dial up connection. We allow the pc's to directly
> dial
> into us and map drives. All other Microsoft OS's can use the net use
> command
> or manually mapping drives process and map drive but not Vista on dial up.
> With the same PC that can not map a drive on dial up, connecting to the
> Internet over broadband and establishing a VPN connection allows mapping
> drives.
> Does anyone have any clues as to how to fix this issue?

Hi CrC

It may be because the SMB client is not enabled. When you create a dial-up
connection in Vista, by default the "Client for Microsoft Networks" (ie, the
CIFS/SMB client) is not enabled for the Connection. Without an SMB client
active on the connection, you cannot map a drive (which requires an SMB
session to the server).

You need to go into the Connection Properties, Networking, and tick the
"Client for Microsoft Networks" checkbox. Save changes and restart the
connection.

If that doesn't solve the problem, you'd probably want to troubleshoot it as
a general SMB networking issue:
- can the client ping the server by IP address?
- If so, can the client ping the server by DNS host name?
- if so, can the client ping the server by NetBIOS machine name?
- if so, can the client do a NET VIEW \\<server> ?
- if not, what error is returned (eg Error 53, etc)
- can the client do an "NBTStat -r" or "NBTStat -c"? What is in the NetBIOS
name cache?
- can the client NET USE to the server's IP address? eg "NET USE
\\10.0.0.25\Share". If this works and NetBIOS machine name does not, then
you have a NetBIOS name resolution problem.
- and so on ...
Basically, you need to decompose the monolithic problem ("net use doesn't
work") into smaller, more manageable and solvable pieces.

But overall, I suspect it is because the Dial-up connection won't have the
Microsoft networking client enabled. I think this was turned OFF by default
in Vista as a security measure; since not many users do Windows networking
over dial-up (I certainly did LOTS of this, in the past, so I'm not
knocking it).

Hope it helps,
--
Andrew McLaren
amclar (at) optusnet dot com dot au