stephenmbell

I have a network of about 700 windows xp pro machines. They are all named PC100, PC101, PC102, etc.... PC700.... Each of these machines has a file on it, that is specific to that machine. The file is used for a piece of software to process its data. The reason that the file contains machine specific information is because it has a path in it. Example: PC100 and PC101 both use software located on PC101 to process some information. There is a file on both PC100 and PC101 that has the following in it: process A: \\pc101\c\software\ process B: \\pc101\c\software\ process C: \\pc101\c\software\ This gets to be quite cumbersome when we need to add or change additional processes. We need to generate roughly 350 files (specific to each "server" desktop). I got to thinking about it - and I figured that I could fix this with a hosts file. If each of my locations has 2 PC's, I could create a hosts file on the machine like this: Location 1 would be 172.17.100.1 PC100 172.17.100.1 PC1 172.17.100.2 PC101 172.17.100.2 PC2 Location 2 would be 172.17.100.5 PC103 172.17.100.5 PC1 172.17.100.6 PC104 172.17.100.6 PC2 Location 3 would be 172.17.100.9 PC105 172.17.100.9 PC1 172.17.100.10 PC106 172.17.100.10 PC2 Having the 2 names for PC1 and PC2 will not matter because this host name will only be used on their internal network (LAN). The PC103, 104, etc etc will be used for the WAN. PC101 cannot see PC103 because they are in different locations - and we do not allow traffic between locations. I set this up, and I could ping the machines using both names. My problem is: If I am on PC101 and I go to Start --> Run --> \\pc101\c\software I can get there no problem However, if I go to Start --> Run --> \\pc2\c\software I get prompted for credentials I have tried this on multiple machines, including my own desktop and I get the same thing. Do you know why? Thanks sb