John English writes:
> I have a machine at home that I installed a new hard disk in as D:,
> and decided to share the whole disk for simplicity. Later I changed
> my mind, unshared D:, and instead shared a couple of the folders
> in D:. I also have "My Documents" shared. When I connect from my
> laptop, I see My Documents, D:, and the shared folders on D. This
> is despite D not neing shared any more. If I try to coinnect to D,
> it says it can't connect (not surprising). It also does the same
> for My Documents. The other folders are fine.
>
> Can anyone suggest any reasons why D: still comes up, several months
> after I disabled sharing on it, and why My Documents won't let me connect?
> Can anyone recommend me any good tools for investigating what Windows
> is actually doing, maybe?

Could it be that the laptop just remembers that there was a D share on
that computer? That is, when you actually go to connect to that
share from your laptop is the drive still really accessible?

What I'm getting at is perhaps there's a network place definition for
a D drive on a given computer, but perhaps it's not actually usable.

--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

Todd H. wrote:

> John English writes:
>
>>I have a machine at home that I installed a new hard disk in as D:,
>>and decided to share the whole disk for simplicity. Later I changed
>>my mind, unshared D:, and instead shared a couple of the folders
>>in D:. I also have "My Documents" shared. When I connect from my
>>laptop, I see My Documents, D:, and the shared folders on D. This
>>is despite D not neing shared any more. If I try to coinnect to D,
>>it says it can't connect (not surprising). It also does the same
>>for My Documents. The other folders are fine.
>>
>>Can anyone suggest any reasons why D: still comes up, several months
>>after I disabled sharing on it, and why My Documents won't let me connect?
>>Can anyone recommend me any good tools for investigating what Windows
>>is actually doing, maybe?
>
> Could it be that the laptop just remembers that there was a D share on
> that computer? That is, when you actually go to connect to that
> share from your laptop is the drive still really accessible?
>
> What I'm getting at is perhaps there's a network place definition for
> a D drive on a given computer, but perhaps it's not actually usable.

As I understand it (as much as anyone can understand networking on
Windows :-) the list of shares is built dynamically by contacting
the local master browser, so I doubt that very much. Both machines
have been rebooted numerous times, and the laptop has been used on
other networks, which makes me doubt it even more.

What I'd really like to find is some tool I could use to actually
find out which machine has elected itself as the local master browser
and find out what shares each machine is advertising... Anyone know
of any such? Ports of Samba tools to Windows, maybe?

Cheers,

-----------------------------------------------------------------
John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer | http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je
School of Computing & MIS | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
University of Brighton | -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

John English writes:

> Todd H. wrote:
>
> > John English writes:
> >
> >>I have a machine at home that I installed a new hard disk in as D:,
> >>and decided to share the whole disk for simplicity. Later I changed
> >>my mind, unshared D:, and instead shared a couple of the folders
> >>in D:. I also have "My Documents" shared. When I connect from my
> >>laptop, I see My Documents, D:, and the shared folders on D. This
> >>is despite D not neing shared any more. If I try to coinnect to D,
> >>it says it can't connect (not surprising). It also does the same
> >>for My Documents. The other folders are fine.
> >>
> >>Can anyone suggest any reasons why D: still comes up, several months
> >>after I disabled sharing on it, and why My Documents won't let me connect?
> >>Can anyone recommend me any good tools for investigating what Windows
> >>is actually doing, maybe?
> > Could it be that the laptop just remembers that there was a D share
> > on
> > that computer? That is, when you actually go to connect to that
> > share from your laptop is the drive still really accessible? What
> > I'm getting at is perhaps there's a network place definition for
> > a D drive on a given computer, but perhaps it's not actually usable.
>
> As I understand it (as much as anyone can understand networking on
> Windows :-) the list of shares is built dynamically by contacting
> the local master browser, so I doubt that very much. Both machines
> have been rebooted numerous times, and the laptop has been used on
> other networks, which makes me doubt it even more.

If it's been rebooted numerous times, yeah, that rules it out. I've
seen problems with the dynamically created lists of shares in the
past, but if you've been thrugh a lot of reboots, that takes care of
that shot in the dark.

> What I'd really like to find is some tool I could use to actually
> find out which machine has elected itself as the local master browser
> and find out what shares each machine is advertising... Anyone know
> of any such? Ports of Samba tools to Windows, maybe?

You could drop a Knoppix bootable linux live cd into any other pc you
have available and use smbclient there if you wanted to poke there.

Or grab a copy of Ethereal and and sniff the traffic on the computer
giving the problems and see what you can find. It's a weird one I
haven't seen before.

--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/