Cannot ping Windows 2008 R2 by hostname

Question

I cannot ping the Windows 2008 R2 server by hostname from Windows XP Home machines, but I can ping it from Windows 7 Ultimate machines. I already disabled ipv6. I need to access a shared folder: \server\a

All computers are on the same local network, there is no DNS in use. Just every computer in the same Workgroup.

Any ideas why?

EDITED: I have heard that the problem could be that different systems chose different Master browsers.

Solution

Judging by your comments that you aren't using DNS, your problem is NetBIOS name resolution.

NetBIOS over TCP/IP is disabled in Windows Server 2008 R2 by default, however it is the only way for XP to handle local name resolution without a DNS server. This problem does not exist for newer OSes on your network, because they use LLMNR/WS-Discovery, and not NetBIOS.

You can enable the NetBIOS responder in the WINS section of the IPv4 network settings:

You also need to make sure that the Computer Browser service is started and that Windows Firewall is allowing inbound IPv4 NetBIOS traffic.

Comments

[MDMarra]

Can you ping it by IP address?

[theSpyCry]

yes i can ping it by IP adress

[theSpyCry]

perhaps another topic is, the server has a dynamic IP provided by local DHCP. As all computers should only access WebServices on server/Services.asmx I do not know if it would not be a problem

[davidb]

If you can ping it via IP address. You should flushdns (ipconfig /flushdns) and see if it works now.

[theSpyCry]

no, cannot find the hostname. But it is on the LAN with no DNS server or anything.

[David Schwartz]

How is it supposed to work? By what mechanism are you expecting the machine to get the IP address from the hostname?

[John Gardeniers]

Why do you have a server with DHCP assigned address and why don't you have DNS? Are you deliberately trying to make things harder for yourself?

[theSpyCry]

i can imagine that with no DNS server i cannot translate the hostname to an IP address. But it works e.g. on XP machines where all peers are equal. So i supposed it could work like this: a machine sends a broadcast and asks who has this hostname, then the right one responds.

[theSpyCry]

@DavidSchwartz isn't that NetBios ?

[theSpyCry]

I have enabled it but still no luck :/

[MDMarra]

See my last edit. You're also going to need to make sure that the computer browser service is started and that Windows Firewall (if enabled) is configured to allow NetBIOS traffic.

[theSpyCry]

What do you recommend as the most elegant way of losing this problem? Should I make the computer a wins server or some other who would care of translating names to ip addresses? Or a domain controller? Or it is an overkill for this purpose

[MDMarra]

Use DNS. WINS is a dying (dead) technology.