Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Problems accessing file shares from Server 2008 R2 using the SMB protocol

My current ConfigMgr infrastructure includes distribution points scattered around North America and Caribbean. We are forced to use a simple file share as these devices don’t support IIS so packages are replicated using the SMB protocol. These remote devices were first used for our SMS environment where my primary site server was running Windows Server 2003 and I had very few problems. Since I have moved to ConfigMgr, where my primary site server is running Windows Server 2008 R2, I have had nothing but grief. Most of the time my site will fail to establish a connection to my remote devices until I reboot the server. The reboot is a temporary fix as the connection problem will resurface shortly. I’m able to connect to the share from other machines and my connection account is a local admin on the distribution points. I can ping the remote device from the site server but when I browse to the share I get the following error:

Error code: 0x80070035
The network path was not found.

After a little digging I came across Microsoft article KB2194664 referencing these exact symptoms. Essentially the Mrxsmb10.sys driver specifies a logon ID the first time that a connection is established to a remote share using the SMB protocol. The logon ID and the name of the server are saved in a server entry of the SMB Redirector. However, the Mrxsmb10.sys driver does not update the logon ID after the initial logon. Any attempt thereafter to use the name from the first connection will fail regardless of the user name. The hotfix referenced on the KB article will resolve this issue and has helped immensely in my environment.