net commands stop working

[bookouri]

Ive had several workstations lately where the user reported that their network drives didnt map. When I went to their xppro workstations, I found that the net use command wouldnt work. None of the "net" commands would work. When I tried to use any net command, i got an error that the program "net" couldnt be found. Rebooting the machine's has so far restored all the net functionality, but this morning I had the same thing happen on a server. All our machines are kept up to date on all the patches. Are there any recent windows updates that could have caused this to start happening?

has anybody seen anything like this?

 

[rvnguy]

bookouri,

See if there is a solution in these

thread779-1101461

How to troubleshoot network connectivity problems

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325487&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

How to troubleshoot TCP/IP connectivity with Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=314067

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[bookouri]

nope, none of those help any. its not a network connectivity problem, its a windows OS problem. Windows is "losing" the net commands themselves.

 

[rvnguy]

bookouri ,

Yes, I understand that you are losing the "net cmds". This behaviour occurs when there is no recognized connectivity. Win believes there is no connection and therefore cannot excecute a net cmd. Kinda chicken or egg.

Try in the network control panel to repair connection. And from the cmd line ipconfig /flushdns

More Detail
Flush and reset a client resolver cache using the ipconfig command

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...elp/a184e334-2c9f-48c4-abe7-804188200dd9.mspx

Also troubleshoot at cmd line; ping by name, ping by ip, can also try mapping by ip.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[JockMullin]

Hi Bookouri

It sounds like Windows is losing access to net.exe which normally resides in c:\windows\system32.

This folder is normally part of the default path set up for DOS sessions. Maybe something is clobbering the path or holding net.exe open exclusively.

Next time it happens, try manually entering the full path to net.exe at a command prompt and put a copy of net.exe elsewhere and try using that to see if it is just unable to find or access net.exe.

Jock

 

[bookouri]

I planned on trying the full path name next time. I THINK I tried it when it happened but i couldnt swear to that now..

funny thing, even when the net commands are not working, I do still have network connectivity, so it does sound more like the path being "lost" than anything else.

 

[rvnguy]

bookouri,

I did not catch that you still have connectivity but just cannot access the net cmds.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[Rick998]

Just in case, have you tried 'Rootkit Revealer'? (

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html)

I had a similar situation 2 months ago at a remote site when some built-in network-related functionality on a LAN-connected XP Pro PC (with Internet access) stopped working or was not acting as expected.

'Rootkit Revealer' showed discrepancies. I never got to the root (no pun intended) of the problem (not enough time... but initial investigation showed Internet access had been misused) but a re-image of the PC proved successful. It was a pain to re-image... but quicker than trying to find out how and why the problem had occurred.

Hope this helps...

 

[bookouri]

it would actually be easy for me to re-image the machine, we normally dont even try to work with glitchy machines, we just re-ghost them. But since its showed up on a couple of machines now, and even a server, Im scared that there's something more going on, and at this point Im not sure that my image is "clean" from what's going on.

 

[Rick998]

It would only take a couple of minutes to check one of the affected PC's with 'Rootkit Revealer'. This at least should give you either peace of mind or more information.

 

[allteltec]

If you have repeat PC's I would do a Start Run and CMD and do a type path on the PC when working ok, Then when you have problems I would do the path check again and see if it has been change. You could always make a batch file to put the path back if on the server if you can't reboot dirring the work hrs.