using \\servername\sharename in IE9 not being picked up as intranet site

Question

I have a very basic intranet site for our company, and it's main purpose is to link to SMB shares on our network, so people can open files and edit them, without the need to then reupload to the site.

What I have, is a basic < a href="\IP ADDRESS\SHARENAME\">< /a>

The issue seems to be, regardless of whether I use the IP address, or the actual DNS name of the machine, IE9 always seems to think the intranet is an internet site, and stops these links from working.

Let's say for example, the web server address is 10.1.3.81, and I have a share on that same server for a global phone directory spreadsheet. I want someone to be able to click on the link on the page, and have it open that file directly.

So for the href, I put in \\10.1.3.81\intranet\phone directory\list.xls

Or something like that. IE9 (which is what all our users are using), considers this link to point to file://10.1.3.81/intranet/phone directory/list.xls

That's great, but as it doesnt consider this to be on the intranet, it blocks the file:// protocol, and the link does nothing.

If I add the site to my trusted sites list, it then works correctly. So I am wondering if there is a way on the programming side of things, that will let me create these kind of links and have them auto picked up as an intranet link?

Failing that, I will post on serverfault, and see if someone can guide me on applying a policy to add this site to trusted sites for all users and computers.

Many thanks

Eds

Answer 1

As it turns out, I was accessing the intranet by using either the FQDN or the IP address of the server.

As this article shows, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303650 , if I just use the server name instead, and drop the domain name from the end, the links behave as I would like.

Sorry for this useless question.

Thanks, Eds