The (network) path was not found

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I described this in another forum post, but it turns out to be a much broader issue.

This week, I’ve setup a bunch of new pc’s with Windows 10 22H2. I normally use WDS to roll out images, but when I try to do so, I boot from the network, start Setup and then it asks for credentials of a domain admin. And that’s when ‘Path not found’ popped up the first time. Later, it also popped up when trying to access a Windows 2016 server from a non-domain machine. At first, the message seems rather clear – but it isn’t. Using the same non-domain joined client, I can type net use * \\server\share /user:name * and it will make the connection and I can access the share using the drive letter assigned. So path not found? Not really.

Anyway, I managed to work around this. Until I noticed the LanGuard client Agent won’t install on them new pc’s. Tried to force the install. Nope. Manually installed the agent. Although it does install, the LanGuard server won’t pick them up. Tried a manual scan by using the pc’s name and scan for critical patches. And it does find the client. But after a while, the scan fails and leaves me with some familiar errors:

Open connection; The network path was not found
Getting server information; The network path was not found

Mind you, this IS a domain-joined client. I installed the LanGuard Agent on all the other pc’s in the domain for about a year ago, without any trouble. So IMO there’s been some changes over the last year causing this problem. But I can’t figure out what changed. It looks like it has something to do with credentials? But nothing is logged in the Windows eventlog. So I’m pretty much at a loss here…..

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Stab in the dark, since I have not worked with domains since I retired 30+ years ago.

Could it be something like SMB1 missing in the mix? It has been removed/disabled within the past year by default. A protocol issue instead of credentials.

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Checked out SMB and we have SMB 1 disabled many years ago.

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You might need to enable SMB1. I had a situation like that — one of my customers has an SMB1 server, and they aren’t going to change that anytime soon. I had to enable SMB1 on any new PC I was setting up, else it wouldn’t be able to log on to the domain.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5020276-netjoin-domain-join-hardening-changes-2b65a0f3-1f4c-42ef-ac0f-1caaf421baf8

Are you reusing accounts?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Yes, I did reuse accounts. I had most of the new machines running by desperately throwing all kinds of ‘solutions’ at them to get them to boot. When the MDT solution installed Windows in a jiffy, I also re-installed all other machines. And was surprised it didn’t nag about An account with the same name exists when adding them back to the domain. Reading the article you mentioned, that mystery is solved.

The article calls for some action, which I haven’t performed yet. Point 5 in the Take action part has me puzzeled:

Use the object picker to add users or groups of trusted computer account creators and owners to the Allow permission. (As a best practice, we highly recommend that you use groups for permissions.) Do not add the user account that performs the domain join.

I don’t understand the ‘computer account creators’? When joining pc’s to the domain, I use the domain Admin account. In my thinking, the account joining a pc to a domain, is also the creator of the computer account. Apparently, creating a computer account and joining a computer are two distinct things that can be performed by different users? Don’t see how that can be done….

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A user can actually join a computer to a domain, it doesn’t have to be domain admin.  In smaller firms we typically use the domain admin account.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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The problem with LanGuard is solved. I don’t think it had anything to do with the ‘path not found’ problem. The LanGuard Agent did not install on the new pc’s we bought. No matter what I tried. When trouble shooting, the ‘path not found’ message popped up, so I thought I was on to something. And so I set out further trouble shooting yesterday. Testing the Agent connectivity, it failed right away – could not ping the pc. So I checked out the ports that need to be open for the Agent and made some adjustments to a GPO to allow ICMP Ping. But then I noticed some old pc’s I had brought back into service since the new ones weren’t there yet, had installed the LanGuard Agent without any intervention. How can that be? The same GPO’s are applied to all machines, so how come these old ones have the Agent installed and the new ones won’t budge?

Removed the crippled pc’s out of LanGuard and let LanGuard do a scan for new pc’s. Low and behold, it found the new machines and installed the Agent, like there was no problem at all. Sigh.

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windbg

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