Error 404 When Accessing Intranet Using NetBIOS Server

ID: Q174339

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 95
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.51 and 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.51 and 4.0

SYMPTOMS

When you attempt to access an intranet Web site using its NetBIOS name in Internet Explorer instead of using its host name, you may receive the following error message:

   http:/1.0 404 Object Not Found

Instead of the above error message, you may experience long delays when you attempt to load intranet Web pages.

CAUSE

The client system on which you are running Internet Explorer has a domain name configured within its TCP/IP properties.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods:

Add the web server's NetBIOS name to your Domain Name Service (DNS) server. This will keep the DNS server from forwarding the query to other DNS servers -- possibly root servers on the Internet -- in an attempt to resolve the name. If your DNS server is authoritative for the domain being queried, it can respond almost instantly with a positive or negative response, avoiding any timeouts. If the DNS server is not authoritative for the domain being queried, and its cache file contains root servers, it will forward the name query to the root servers that are authoritative for that domain and wait for a response before replying to the client. This can make the client wait up to five seconds, after which time it will resend its query to the same DNS server.
-or-
If the client receives DNS server IP addresses from a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, do not configure static DNS server IP addresses in the client's TCP/IP properties. This increases the number of servers from which it will wait for a response before trying to resolve the name via a NetBIOS name service.

For additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q165826
   TITLE     : Problems Using Internet Explorer with a Proxy Server

MORE INFORMATION

When you type a name in the address line of Internet Explorer, such as "server", and your computer is configured with a domain name, such as "domain.com", a name query is first sent with the domain appended to the name, "server.domain.com". This query will be sent to all DNS servers for which your computer is configured before trying to resolve the name of just "server" through a NetBIOS naming service such as Windows Internet Name Service (WINS).

Computers configured for DHCP and running Windows 95 and Windows NT that have DNS server addresses manually specified in their TCP/IP configuration will effectively have four DNS servers to send queries to. The client will try to use all DNS addresses available. The client queries its primary and secondary DNS addresses first and it will then wait for a response for up to five seconds before querying again. If it fails to resolve the name on the first two servers, it will then try the third and fourth DNS addresses and wait for responses from them. While waiting for these servers to respond, the client browser may timeout.

Keywords          : kberrmsg kbinterop kbnetwork win95 NTSrvWkst 
Version           : WinNT:4.0;Windows:95
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: April 3, 1998