I have several users that are having problems on my network. Today i got a call from a user saying they are attempting to connect to a mapped drive that is just a shared folder on the domain controller and it will not let them connect. it either times out and says it cant be found (it is trying to connect to the server name not the ip)or it says that the mapped drive is already in use or something weird as if something else is using the drive letter i assigned to it. I went to that persons PC and attempted to ping the domain controller and got no response. The user was able to get to the internet but was not able to authenticate to the DC, if i typed in \\DOMINNAME it would time out, if i typed in \\THE IP OF THE DC it would ask me for a user name and password and would say the log in failed. This is not always the case I had one user that could not talk with the DC nor could she get out to the internet. As i test i added a public DNS server statically to her NIC and she was able to get out to the internet, that did not help anything else but it made me want to point my finger at the DC. Anyway, what i have to do and seems to be the only thing that fixes the problem is rebooting the DC and then things work fine. Sometimes only for hours and other times for days. My setup i think is simple, I have one server that is running SBS 2011 and is the Domain controller + DNS as well as the file server. the server and the workstations sit behind a sonicwall firewall and users are connected to a 24portGB switch. I am not using all lot of the SBS features as i don't need them. The next part i am not sure if i have correct or if this might be my issue im just not sure. I have static setting from my ISP that include my public IP addresses subnet mask gateway and DNS. the SOnicwall is my DHCP server and i have the sonicwall giving the ip of my domain controller as the first out of three DNS servers the other two below it are from my ISP. My domain controller is using 127.0.0.0 or something like that, it is using itself and does not have any other DNS settings. I have read in several places I should not be passing DNS settings down from my firewall and instead should only pass down my internal DNS server and then setup forwarders on my domain controller. I am pretty sure I have Active Directory Sites and Services setup correctly as well as DHCP on the firewall. (Except the whole DNS thing I am not sure which way to go with that). Also this does not happen to everyone and does not happen at the same time. one user might be having a problem connecting to the mapped drive and or getting out to the internet and another user is working just fine. I have attempted to explain this the best I can and will provide additional information if requested. Any thoughts?
Domain Controller - SBS 2011
