I setup a Western Digital Live Network drive the other day for a
customer and ran into a problem with one of the computers. The two
computers that were running Windows 7 found the drive and I was able to
map the drive and have it show up with no problem. However, on the
Windows XP machine, I could not map the drive even though I could ping
it and reach it through the web browser. A variety of errors popped up
including the "A Device Attached to the System is Not Functioning"
error message, and System Error 31.
I checked the following issues but everything was fine.
- All computers were using same Workgroup name
- Only one Master Browser on the network
- All required network services were running on Windows XP
In
an effort to fix the problem I even renamed the PC, however the problem
remained. I could ping the NAS device and even bring it up in a
browser. The device was connected just fine to the router and all of
the other computers could find the network storage and create a mapped
drive without any problem.
The Fix
The solution to
the entire issue was to go into Device Manager and remove the network
adapter and entire network from the troubled PC, reboot, and allow
Windows to reinstall everything for the network card from scratch
making sure the correct workgroup was chosen.
After a reboot,
the computer could find all the other PCs on the network as well as the
network attached storage device we added. I mapped the drive and we
were done.
When all else fails, completely reinstall the network card and services
on the PC and it works.