Windows Vista can't browse ( netbt 4311 in eventlog )

[urbanriot]

I have a strange problem with my Vista install, and I'd rather figure it out than reformat. Basically it's a fairly fresh install of Windows Vista Home Basic x64 w/SP1 that was working fine. Suddenly one day it refused to browse network shares.

I can access the internet fine from this system.

The system won't resolve local DNS names, however nslookup works fine.

The hardware is fine, I have other OS's successfully accessing the network off other drives.

I can't access other systems through netbios shares (ie. \\system). I receive "Windows cannot access \\system", diagnose offers to 'repair' and this has no effect.

I attempted netsh int ip rset (no effect).

Checked event log and found a System Error for Source: netbt and Event ID: 4311 with the error: "Initialization failed because the driver device could not be created. Use the string "macaddress" to identify the interface for which initialization failed. It represents the MAC address of the failed interface or the Globally Unique Interface Identifier (GUID) if NetBT was unable to map from GUID to MAC address. If neither the MAC address nor the GUID were available, the string represents a cluster device name."

The macaddress listed matches with the network card.

I found the following technet page that details my problem - http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...e648-4b3f-9b94-a0b55b679f891033.mspx?mfr=true

The 'solution' provided obviously didn't work.

I've attempted 'simple' diagnostics and fixes, however this seems to be a little more complicated and I don't have enough experience with Vista yet... any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[urbanriot]

Interestingly, I can \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx access the shares... but it won't access through netbios names. Frustrating!

 

[H-street]

i think when i had this problem it ended up being a network configuration problem, in that it wasn't appending the correct domain name.. check your dns settings under the advanced tabs of the tcp/ip.

if you can access it via IP then its most liikely a messed up dns/naming setup..

(the register dns name section and stuff like that)

eg.. it may be trying to get the ip address for the share from your dns server (which won't have the ip address hence not finding it)

 

[urbanriot]

Well, no it's not a network configuration option, nor domain related as I'm not running on a domain. It's a NetBIOS issue of some sort (note the netbt event error), definitely a Vista glitch. And the DNS server has the IP address, as noted by my nslookup comment...

 

[urbanriot]

Nevermind, I've completely fixed my problem. On a hunch, I scoured my 2k3 system's registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters and compared it to my Vista ...\Parameters and discovered that somehow the TransportBindName REG_SZ value was empty, when it should have read \Device\.

Hunches FTW.