Cannot access NAS unless I keep changing NAS Host name

I can't beleive no one knows why this is happening.
Each time I start my NAS I must change the network name in the dashboard in order to be able to browse the network....surely that is perplexing enough for someone (more skilled than me) to recreate this fault and work out why this is happening.....

Please!!!!

Are you mapping the shared folders to drive letters on your Windows systems?

If you reboot the Windows PC when this occurs, does the problem disappear?

The 4 volumes on the NAS which represent each harddrive I have mapped to drive letters on the windows system.
There are the default shared folders of media and backup which are on the c volume but I haven't mapped any drive to them.
When I restart the Windows PC the problem remains....I must go into dashboard change the network name of the NAS, then I can change the network name back to what it was before and the network drives will work when I click on them and I am able to browse the volumes on the NAS.

I wrote in my first post that the windows XP popup error is "Microsoft Windows Network : The local device is already in use. The connection has not been restored."
But i got this windows XP popup error saying "\\Nas not accessible. You might not have permission to use that network resource. Contract the adminstrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The network path was not found"

When I change the name of the NAS I don't get any error and I can browse the network to the volumes on the NAS.

Could it have something to so with user name and passwords on the NAS....I haven't set up any users on the NAS (on the sercurity tab on dashboard)
My windows logon is "Admin"....the NAS dashboard won't let me add the user "Admin" maybe this has something to do with it?

The NAS already has a user called admin, this is a reserved account. The same one you may log into the dashboard with. You could try to change the password on the NAS for that user to the same password you use on Windows.

When the NAS is rebooted I often get issues where it won't show up in Explorer on W7 until such times as i reboot the PC. I believe it may have something to do with cached Host-names, as I also use the NAS as a WINS server. Typing the host-name manually into the address bar usually works for me when it refuses to show in network explorer though.

If you google the popup text, you will see that this happens with a variety of mapped network folders when you restart the Windows PC. Note that gibixxi is talking about rebooting the NAS, which doesn't sound like your scenario.

I think if you try clicking on the mapped drive icon later on (a couple of times) the connection usually is re-established. I generally don't map drives myself, instead I put shortcuts on the desktop. If the problem doesn't resolve itself, try entering \\nas in windows explorer.

I use the admin account also with my pro. The main issue is that some versions of Windows require me to enter the password when I first connect to the NAS. Vista for instance will not apply the password in the Credentials manager for admin. I suspect if I used the same password on the PC as the NAS I wouldn't have that problem.

What I was attempting to illustrate is that for me, if the NAS is turned off / rebooted or otherwise disconnected from the network during any period where the desktop PC is on continuously, the NAS can sometimes not be seen in Explorer. Since I rarely turn my desktop off at all, this could be the same issue the OP is experiencing.

It may be down to the "Master Browser" issue I've read about before.

Credentials that are currently setup can be seen via: WIN-KEY+R -> Control Userpasswords2

Likewise, I don't use mapped drives. I access everything over share access / SMB (\\Servername\Share or \\IP Address\Share).

Mapping and accessing network drives before the Windows log on completes opens up some security vulnerabilities. Microsoft fixed that some years ago, and one of the consequences is that mapped drives don't always reconnect at PC startup. So that is part of the puzzle also. It may have nothing to do with name resolution.

Again, the way to test this is to try accessing the mapped drives a few times after bootup, and see if the situation clears by itself.

I have 3 computers on this network (2*Win7 and XP), 1 Win7 machine I have never mapped any drives to the NAS and I still have the same access problem to the NAS. It doesn't matter how many times I try to access it I still get errors as described above. On the machine with the mapped drives, it doesn't matter how many times I click on the mapped drives it refuses to connect as described above.
I've tried resetting my windows password so its the same as the NAS password and it made no difference. (Maybe I should make the usernames the same also?) I needed to change the NAS name before I could access the NAS.
Further to this, I reinstalled a fresh copy of Win7 on 1 of the machines and after I changed the name of the NAS like I usually have to do in order to access it, when I typed \\NAS all I got were the 2 default shares, "media" and "backup"?? WTF!!! where were my volumes c,d,e and f?
The volumes didn't show up, I could see them on dashboard. On the other machine at the same time I could see media, backup and volumes c,d,e and f. I struggled for about 5 hours trying to work out why the volumes were visible on one machine but not the newly built machine. The computers were all in the same workgroup.
This has been one of the most incredibly frustrating introduction to a new piece of hardware I have every had. There are numerous other things which I have written about on other threads such as after a factory reset to Flex-aid JBOD, 1 of the default shares changed by itself from \\NAS\media to \e\ without me doing a thing...anyway thats another story.
I found that the newly built computer displayed only the default shares media and backup, after hours of trying different things I found if I clicked on media I got a password prompt which I never got when I simply entered \\NAS , when I entered the username and password of the NAS and went back the volumes suddenly appeared....How dumb!! Why didn't it give me a prompt when I just typed \\NAS why did I have to click one of the default share buttons in order to get the password prompt to popup?

Anyway I'm still at a loss as to why I need to change the NAS network name each time I start the NAS before I can access from any of the 3 computers I have connected.....any more things I can try? Thanks for your responses so far.

bucky wrote:

I found that the newly built computer displayed only the default shares media and backup, after hours of trying different things I found if I clicked on media I got a password prompt which I never got when I simply entered \\NAS , when I entered the username and password of the NAS and went back the volumes suddenly appeared....How dumb!! Why didn't it give me a prompt when I just typed \\NAS why did I have to click one of the default share buttons in order to get the password prompt to popup?

The basic principle is that Windows presents the windows log on and password to the NAS. If the NAS rejects that log on, then windows will prompt you for another one. From your description it sounds like the NAS itself is set up to allow guest access, but that the individual shares are not. You can override the Windows behavior using the Windows credential manager (telling Windows to use admin and the associated password whenever it accesses the NAS).

The volumes are intended only for administrator use, which is why they didn't appear until you entered the NAS admin log on and password.

bucky wrote:
Anyway I'm still at a loss as to why I need to change the NAS network name each time I start the NAS before I can access from any of the 3 computers I have connected.....any more things I can try? Thanks for your responses so far.

Can you tell us more about what equipment is on your home network, and how the network is configured? Is the NAS set up to run 24x7, or does it sleep/power down on schedule? Does it use dhcp or a static address?

Also, I am wondering if you tried to access the NAS by IP address instead of by name.

The NAS is configured as factory default. So whatever factory default is that's what the settings are. Flex-Raid JBOD with 4 volumes

My home network consists of
Modem router 10.0.0.1 (DHCP server)

PC1 Laptop with Win7
Network name LAPTOP1
10.0.0.3

PC2 Laptop with XPSP3
Network Name Laptop2
10.0.0.4

PC3 Desktop with Win7
10.0.0.7

NAS has a network name of "NAS" on 10.0.0.2 (DHCP assigned but reserved)

I leave the NAS off most of the time....I just turn it on when I want to do a backup.

When I type the NAS ip 10.0.0.2 into address bar it just loads Dashboard
I can ping the NAS and I can load Dashboard, but when I double click the NAS icon in explorer I just get an error. Win7 throws up a window to say "The remote device won't accept the connection". If I change the network name to something, then change it back to NAS, when I double click the NAS icon it works straight away.
Anything else I can tell you?