Windows 2000 Server

[Hoober]

I've been playing around with Windows 2000 server for the last couple of days. I got it so that I could start learning it in conjunction with the stuff I'm doing at work. Anyway, I installed it and finally got DNS/Active Directory up and running along with my domain... I think. It seems to be running fine, and all the networking is going great from SOME of my computers. I finally got DHCP to work from my router, but that's another story.

Anyway, in Network Places, when I open up my empire (hoobersempire) to browse the network, I can do it fine from one other computer (not including the server). However, when I try to open up Hoobersempire from the other three computers I have at home, it gives me the error message "cannot connect to this remote computer because the computer already has as many connections as it can support"

Now I bought five client licenses with W2K Server, so it shouldn't be a problem accessing the network with five computers. All of the computers are joined to the domain, all of them can browse the internet via DHCP from my router. My laptop (the one computer) can browse the network just fine, so can the server. But none of the other computers can. Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks,
Hoober

 

[Hoober]

Anybody?

 

[Poontos]

Did you limit the sharing permissions to a certain amount of users? Up it, if so.

 

[Hoober]

This isn't even trying to access a certain computer in the domain. Its accessing the directory of the domain... sharing permissions affects that?

 

[stash]

What OS are the clients running?

 

[Allanv]

i had this problem also - i went into the control panel and licencing look at the options there are 2, i changed it from the top one to the one below. and it worked gave some sort of warning but hey i buy the licence's and it no work so to hell with the warnings

 

[loosbrew]

when you installed win2k server, did you tell it to use perseat licensing or max number of users? i alway set my max number of users to an outrageous amount, even though you only have a 5client license. also make sure that you have your domain registered in AD and all of the permissions are set there. you can really limit what someone can so on thier pcs with AD.

good luck.
loosbrew

 

[Woodie]

Whatever the # of clients you set is counter "per connection". Very irritating. (one per mapped driver, per printer, per browse...)

Set the # of licenses way high, so it doesn't cause hassles.

--Woodie

 

[loosbrew]

yeah...i always set it to 2500 as a general habit.

loosbrew

 

[Hoober]

Ok, I'll try all of that stuff. The clients are all running Windows 2000. I'll up the permitted users on the shares. Don't know why I limited them, but I'll change it. everything is set up right in AD, as far as I can tell, anyway. Thanks for your help, guys, I'll try it when I get home from work tonight and let ya'll know.

Thanks,
Hoober

 

[Hoober]

Alright, so I did all that and it worked most of the afternoon. Then I had to reboot the server after installing some software and I get a different network browsing error this time: it says that there isn't a logon server available to verify my identity, or something like that. Somebody remind me again why I want to learn this stuff?


Arghhhh..... sooooo frustrating.....

 

[igiveup]

HEHE. You want to learn it so that you can keep your job and get paid more.

REMEMBER: Its not the money but its what you can buy with the money .

 

[Woodie]

When we talking about 2500 users, that was in the number of client licenses, not in the users/share. Make sure the license number is high, then try logging in again. That may have caused the error message you're seeing, as well.

If that's not it, then I suspect you have a DNS problem. W2K w/ AD is very sensitive to DNS, as everything depends on it, especially logon!

Your DC (Domain Controller) should be the DNS server. It should have a static IP address. On the DHCP server, it should hand out the DC's static IP address as the DNS server. The default gateway should be the router. The domain name (IP style) for all the PCs should be the same as the DC, and that domain name should not exist anywhere else in the world (Internet).

Let us know how you're doing.

--Woodie

 

[Hoober]

Thanks for all your replies, guys.

Here's where things stand -- the router requires the DNS entries of my ISP in order to see out to the internet (which we all know makes sense). The static IP that the server is grabbing on its two NICS must also contain the DNS numbers of the ISP (which also makes sense.) So I appended DNS suffixes for the domain lookup in order for the clients to see the domain. The IP addys I put there are the two static IPs taht the server is getting from the router.

Now, what was odd was that the domain browsing worked fine for about four hours last night, then all of a sudden it just quit. The event log told me that there is a duplicat name somewhere on the network. I assume it must be the ISP's network because the server is the only one named that on my internal network. Any suggestions for that problem?

Thanks.

 

[Woodie]

Server has two nics? Connected to the same subnet? with different IPs?

This is most likely the error. It takes a while, but the duplicate name finally will show up in a routing table somewhere..same name, two different IPs. I forget the details, but we've also run into it.

Not sure of the fix...it had something to do with the dual-homed nics, connecting to a single router. Give us more info on the dual-nic & network setup, I'm sure we can figure it out.

--Woodie

 

[Hoober]

I originally put two Nics in the server because I was going to run DHCP through the server and hook up my switch to it directly. I eventually decided that I didn't want to give up the (limited) firewall capabilities of my router and just stuck with it handling DHCP. So I figured well, why not plug both Nics into the switch and get double the bandwidth from the server (mind you I have no idea whatsoever about anything in Windows 2000 server) so I figured that some queries would go to one NIC and some would go to the other.

They both have separate static IPs. Both looking to the router for the gateway. Both using the ISP's DNS numbers in primary lookup. Both listing the server IPs as IP suffix attachments for the domain controller. Thinking about it, though, that makes sense that that could be the problem. The name would eventually show up in the routing tables and that would screw the whole works up. Why, though, would it go away after not using the connections for say eight hours (like I did last night, I just left the server on)?

 

[Woodie]

If there's no traffic going TO the server, then the router doesn't add any entries.

--Woodie

 

[Hoober]

Reinstalled Server last night after taking one of the NICs out. Set up the domain and everything else exactly the same. No more problems. I think that double NIC thing was throwing it for loops.

 

[Woodie]

Yayyyy.

Dual nics can definately be tricky. Much better behaved when they're used for routing traffic between different subnets.

--Woodie

 

[Hoober]

Lol... something else to learn.

 

[loosbrew]

well, the way i set up my server was with two nics. it was acting like my gateway to the net, so i had to have an incoming nic. i set the outgoing nic to DHCP from the isp. gives its own dns and everything. i then gave the internal nic its own IP address and made that server the DHCP server for internal clients. never gave me a problem with the two nics..yet...knock on silicon!

loosbrew

 

[Hoober]

Yeah, that's originally what I was going to do, Loosbrew, but then I decided to stick with my router for DHCP in order to keep the firewall features built into the hardware. I was also too lazy to make and crimp a fifty foot crossover cable running from the NIC in the server to the uplink in the switch.

 

[jurek2000]

Hey,

Actually I have exactly the same problem at home . I'm getting this frustrating message "The server cannot accept any more connections...."
Does anybody know how to solve that problrm ?????? I have tryied licences and lots more - did not work.

 

[Hoober]

Do you have two NICs?

Edit: Check the event log under Admin Toolbar or panel or whatever its called. Its in control panel. That should give you a better idea of what's going on and where to start troubleshooting. Its where I figured out what was wrong with my server -- two servers with the same name and it told me that's what was happening.

 

[jurek2000]

Yes , I have two NICs ,I'm getting this messages also , that I have duplicate name on the network . How I can make it work with two nics then ???

thanx for all help...