RDP working but not able to ping and share can't be accessed through UNC

Question

I am asking this for my live environment servers. So, kindly requested to consider this while answering.. I have 2 cases asked here. Please do number while answering.

1) I have a server which I can take RDP. And there are some shares inside that server. But instead of RDP, for accessing those shares, I am not able to access those shares using UNC path(\server\share), either using hostname or ip address. I cant also ping to this server using hostname and IP address.

2) And the second scenario is that I can take RDP to this server and can ping too. But accessing share through UNC path (either host name or ip) is not working.

Any idea on why in both scenarios? Not sure if this was accessible through UNC earlier. And also these uses Windows server 2003 and are hosted remotely.

Solution

My bet would be a firewall blocking certain ports/applications. Check to see if the local firewall is on, and if it logs any blocks. (Defaults to C:\windows\system32\LogFiles\Firewall\ I believe) Alternately, you'll have to check the gateway device administrators at your source and destination, to see if they filter any traffic.