Question : W2k3 SBS R2 Map Drive authentication issues when using non domain member PC's.

I'm new to this...so I hope that this makes sense.  

I have a small dentist office that's has deployed a w2k3 Small Business Server.  They brought with them from their old office a mishmash of operating systems that including a few Win2000 systems, an XP Home, and a bunch of XP Pro's.  

Here's my problem.  Their EMR system is very picky, and I've mapped network drives to Z: manually on each workstation to make it work.  Since it's such a mishmash, and they're not members of the domain...they're getting a ton of error messages every few hours or when the connection between the server and the client times out.  

The only way they can fix the problem is to open a share folder on the server, enter their credentials, then double click the map drive to re-populate the folder listing.  

Is there a way that I can keep them from having to do this process over and over again without adding every machine to the domain?  Since it's SBS there's a DC configured, however no PC's have been added to the domain due to the client's wishes of not paying for the extra CAL's associated.  

Any help would be great.  

Thanks!

Answer : W2k3 SBS R2 Map Drive authentication issues when using non domain member PC's.

Since you said one or some of the workstaitons are XP Home you can actually get them to authenticate on the domain even though they really need to be upgraded at some point.

To get this to work, you need to name the WORKGROUP of the XP Machine the Same as your domain's NETBIOS name (without the .local), then create a LOCAL user account for the user assigned to that machine which has the SAME NAME and SAME PASSWORD as their domain user account.  They will then log on to the workstation with these credentials... and those will in turn be passed through to the shared folder which will accept them.

But the Windows 2000 and XP Pro machines MUST be members of your domain if you want things to work properly.  If you only currently have the 5 Server CALs but need to get this going, that should be no problem at all either.  Just make sure that when you run the Add User Wizard you DO NOT also add computers within that wizard.  You should then run the Add Client Computers wizard separately.

When you join the workstaitons to the domain using the http://<servername>/connectcomputer wizard do NOT assign a user to the workstations.  Let the connectcomputer wizard finish out, and then log on with a domain administrator account and add the Domain User to the LOCAL Administrator's Group.  Log back on as that user and Outlook will configure automatically.

The reason to do these separately is because otherwise SBS will map the users to the computers and will immediately recognize that there are more than 5.  Keeping them separate during this process will give you enough time to get the proper CALs before SBS figures it out.

Jeff
TechSoEasy