I am trying to access a Windows 2000 sp4 machine on our WAN that I set up in our main office. The IP of the machine, when I connected it to our domain, was 192.168.1.XXX. The IP at the remote office is 192.168.2.XXX. First I did a clean install on the box and set it up at the main office. Then we moved the machine to the remote office and attempted to connect to it via explorer with command: '\\192.168.2.XXX\c$' This will bring up a box that says "Incorrect password or unknown username for: \\192.168.2.XXX". I am logged in as the domain administrator and I don't understand what the problem is. I can ping the machine also. One last thing is that when I attempt to connect to the remote box useing its NETBIOS name I get an "unknown host" error. Please help...

BTW, we use DHCP to assign IPs.

Do you have a VPN set up between your two sites? If not, this will never work becuase the 192.168.x.x address range is not routeable over the public Internet. If you do have a VPN, describe how it is setup. Can you access other network resources between sites?

Yes, we have a VPN setup between the two sites and we are currently able to access all other machines the 192.168.2.XXX network. It is just this one box that I can't get into. I'm wondering if it is some sort of DNS problem but I reset the domain controller and all other servers and still get no progress. I've also done nbtstat -r and nbtstat -RR to force a refresh but it didn't help either. Our VPN is handled by our ISP so I assume its set up is pretty average. We are able to access remote machines (the ones on the remote 192.168.2.XXX network) just like we access machines at the home office. Hope this helps. Thanks.

When you think it will take 10 mins you are in for 2 days worth of headaches.

After (re)reading your posts, it does seem that the VPN is working - you do have connectivity between the two sites.

Since you did a clean install on the miscreant server, have you ever been able to access it remotely? Even when it was on your local site? I would look into the server's configuration - check to see if it is joined to the domain, trusted, correct accounts setup, etc. The WAN/VPN part of the equation doesn't seem to be relevant at this point.

Yes, I could access it just fine when it was first set up. The command \\comp_name\c$ worked and also \\192.168.1.XXX\c$ worked. That's what I don't get. It is registered on our domain controller, uses a default account that works all over the domain, and isn't being blocked by any sort of firewall or anything either.

When you think it will take 10 mins you are in for 2 days worth of headaches.

Strange. Are you able to connect to the server from any computer at its local site?

At this point, I think I would start looking at event logs on the server. If you're getting a "Incorrect password or unknown username" error, the server probably is receiving (and rejecting) your authentication attempts. Maybe the failed login events will give you a clue as to what the server is doing.

Also, you might try connecting at the command line - using the NET command - and see what happens. If nothing else, you might at least get some more verbose error messages.