Novel Netware 5.1 network drives for windows

Question

We have a novel netware 5.1 file server in use for several years with xp machines now we have a new win 7 machine. I downloaded the novell network client for windows put in the tree and context info and double checked the user name and password. but can't map the network drive. also i can't ping the server as well. Server is working just fine with xp machine. Any idea?

Answer 1

It could be a couple of things:

1. It is possible, though not likely, that the Novell Netware servers are still running pure IPX. Microsoft dropped IPX support for Windows as of Vista. If your NW servers are in this state, there isn't a thing you can do short of turning on TCP/IP for them.
2. It is possible, though somewhat more likely, that you're running both IPX and TCP/IP on your network. TCP name resolution isn't working for some reason, so it's falling back on IPX SAP resolution which is how it is learning about network resources. To fix this, you will need to get your SLP environment up and running.
3. It is more likely that your SLP environment is working just fine, but your Windows firewall doesn't have the needed rule added to it. By default, the NW client will use multicast to search for a SLP directory-agent, and the DA will reply to the client via unicast UDP to a specific port. If that port isn't allowed through the Windows firewall (port 524 from memory) name resolution won't work and you'll get the behavior you describe.

A quick test is to put the IP address of one server that holds an eDirectory replica in the "Server" field. If that works, TCP/IP is working but SLP name resolution is failing for some reason.