Problems connecting to workstation share

Question

Been having a strange issue with our file replication server. It will randomly have a problem mapping to a share. This server maps to tons of other servers using UNC paths, thats the sole purpose of this server. When the problem occurs, we can map to other servers without a problem. It just gets hung up on the name of the path.

Rebooting the server of course fixes the issue, I've even had luck restarting the workstation service. Restarting the workstation service is not very reliable, sometimes it gets hung and we are forced to reboot the server.

Here is what I have done for troubleshooting. Logged onto server, tried to map to the particular computer share \\rom1w000\$pclan, yes the share has a $ sign. As soon as I click the OK button to try and map, I get an error IMMEDIATELY that says "The Specified Network Name Is No Longer Available". I flushed dns multiple times, ran wireshark to look for SMB traffic, it doesn't even query DNS for the name.

Oddly enough, if I map to the workstation via IP address it maps no problem. If I map using the FQDN it works. I'm pretty sure if I made a cname and mapped to it, it would work. It is getting hung up when mapping to a path that the server has already mapped too or somehow already knows about that path.

I am convinced that Windows is caching this information somewhere that I can't find. The way I get the error so quickly, without any record of DNS queries make me think there is a cache somewhere. When googling the error message I see alot of mention about SEP11, we are running SEP 12.1 but I'm pretty sure this is not a SEP issue.

I went as far as running procmon.exe trying to see where the cached information is, didnt find anything concrete. But I did get some results from explorer.exe trying to map to the drive and the Result was "BAD NETWORK NAME"

I don't know if the strange path has anything to do with it, the event just before was a CreateFile operation to \\rom1w000\pclan$ with a Result of "Disconnect"

Server is running WIN2K8 R2 Standard, replication software is superflexible. Worstation that we are trying to map to is running WinXP SP3. This server generally has atleast 100 connections to other machines, don't know if some of Windows DDOS mitigation techniques might be coming into play or not.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.