Hello Folks.... I'm working for a small company. They have 3 Windows 7 home premium notebooks and they recently purchased a Windows 2008 Foundation server for file sharing and principal application hosting (backend on the server / fat client on the local notebooks). I set the server up for file sharing role and application hosting. I created accounts for the user 3 users and a group account. I shared the folder with read/write for the group. When I attempt to connect to the shared folder \\hostname\share, it doesn't work. However, if I put in \\ipaddress\share it connects but it takes a very log time to connect. I checked the networking an it is ok. In fact, on my WinXp Pro notebook, the share with hostname connects right away. I put one of the notebooks in the same workgroup as the server, but that didn't seem to resolve the issue. So, I'm not sure of the issue...any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. tl;dr --> windows 7 home premium notebooks having issues connecting to shared resources on Windows 2008 Foundation server

Hi, I want to inform you that Windows 7 Home Premium can’t join to a domain. As you accessing the shared resource outside of the domain, thus you needs to provide the FQDN name: \\server.domain.com\shared_folder Regards, Leo HuangPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Leo, I am aware that Windows Home Premium can not join a domain. I'm not trying to join any of the workstations to a domain - in fact the server role is setup only with file sharing. This issue is that it takes a long time to connect and will only connect via ip address of the server. Regards, Tim

This sounds more and more like a DNS issue. Make sure your server and the Windows 7 machines all have "A" (host) records in your DNS. If you're not using DNS to resolve internal network names, you'll have to put the information in each machine's HOSTS file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts).

I had not considered the DNS. I'm going to put in the host name as its a really small outfit (three computers and a file server). I did add the LmCompatibilityLevel DWORD value 1 to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa That helped a bit. The windows 7 home connects using the hostname. But, it takes about 20-30 seconds. I'll put in the host entry and see if that speeds things up.

Even though it's that small, when time and circumstances permit you might want to consider letting the server handle DHCP and DNS, although without a domain it wouldn't be AD-integrated. That would allow you to add/remove computers in the future without having to worry about network configuration issues. Note: I've got one HP 2133 Netbook that runs Windows 7 Home Premium x86 (rather well too) that I use on my Windows 2003 domain for troubleshooting connectivity problems. It only takes ~4-5 seconds to connect to any share. And that's using wireless...

I created identical accounts on each of the workstations that are present on the file server. This help immensely. When connecting to the shared resources, it connects right away. Even though it was connecting to the drives properly, I updated the hosts file on each of the workstations - just in case.