Hello,
if you have the TCP/IP Netbios Helper service disabled on your Windows Server 2003 system you may run into the following issues :
– “RPC Server Unavailable” message when logging with an user that requires Active Directory Authentication
– Access to Network Shares inoperant
– Eventual problems when refreshing group policy
It is recommended that you keep this service on, or at least if it is of absolute necessary to have it off, make sure that all the network shares from/to this server are mapped using FQDN hostname. If netbt (Netbios over TCP/IP) is disabled, DNS will not be able to process the NETBIOS hostname resolution and will thus require a fully qualified hostname to be passed :
\\MYSERVER\myshare will not work
\\MYSERVER.MYDOMAIN.COUNTRY\myshare will work
Regarding AD authentication problems, you might be in a case where you have Netbios resolution enabled, but where your Netbios TCP/IP Helper service is down. In this case, AD tries to resolve using Netbios resolution but it fails due to the service being down. For deeper troubleshooting I recommend the following Microsoft KB Article : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc961921.aspx
I am keeping a vigilant eye on the AD Authentication issue so expect more updates on this topic!