Question : Weird LAN problem causing network drive lost

I run a small LAN Domain with less than 20 PCs. All running Windows XP Pro SP3.
The server running Windows 2003 standard server R2, SP2.

It's been up and running for several years.

Last week a user came across an odd problem. In the morning, he switches on the PC and logs in. During the course of the working day he'd lose the ability to open his network drives. Only logging off and back on seemed to work for him.
It's as if the server thinks he's not logged in any more.

I examined his PC and can find nothing wrong with it and no other users, all on the same domain, were reporting issues.

I did a few tests myself on my own XP Pro sp3 machine and did discover an odd problem.
On normal day-day logon my logon batch script adds various network drives to resources on the Server.

If I run another batch script that simply does:

@ECHO OFF
:loop
net view /domain:ECSTECH
wait 2
goto loop

then I get a listing like this:

System error 51 has occurred.

Windows cannot find the network path. Verify that the network path is correct an
d the destination computer is not busy or turned off. If Windows still cannot fi
nd the network path, contact your network administrator.

System error 51 has occurred.

Windows cannot find the network path. Verify that the network path is correct an
d the destination computer is not busy or turned off. If Windows still cannot fi
nd the network path, contact your network administrator.

System error 51 has occurred.

Windows cannot find the network path. Verify that the network path is correct an
d the destination computer is not busy or turned off. If Windows still cannot fi
nd the network path, contact your network administrator.

System error 51 has occurred.

Windows cannot find the network path. Verify that the network path is correct an
d the destination computer is not busy or turned off. If Windows still cannot fi
nd the network path, contact your network administrator.

Server Name            Remark

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\\AUREUS               ECSTECH SERVER
\\ECS3              
\\ECS5              
\\ECS6
\\ECS11              
\\ECS14               Stuarts PC
\\ECS17               SCANNER
\\ECS19              
\\ECS23            
\\ECS24              
\\SERVER               ECSTECH SERVER
The command completed successfully.

System error 51 has occurred.

Windows cannot find the network path. Verify that the network path is correct an
d the destination computer is not busy or turned off. If Windows still cannot fi
nd the network path, contact your network administrator.

System error 71 has occurred.

No more connections can be made to this remote computer at this time because the
re are already as many connections as the computer can accept.


etc...


When I run this net view script and have a network drive open via 'my computer' then the net view command NEVER fails.
But when I close the network drive, within minutes the error 51 returns. If I have a network drive open it never fails.

I've looked in the event logs of the XP client and can't find any errors.

Any clues to what I need to look for?

Answer : Weird LAN problem causing network drive lost

Discovered a HOST file corruption which was causing DNS V NETBIOS conflict.