Network Drive Disconnected

[GB]

Hi, I wonder if one of you clever people could help me please?

I run an office with 6 PCs networked on a peer to peer basis. Mixture of
versions of Windows, but the problem is on the XP machines.

All of the machines are mapped to a drive letter - John's PC is J: on all
the other PCs for example. The problem I have is that the J drive stays
disconnected until there is some activity on it. So, it shows as 'Network
Drive Disconnected' in My Computer. It is easy enough to 'wake up' the
network connection just by clicking on the drive.

One of our users still uses Excel 5, and this cannot find the J drive until
it has been separately woken up. Is there any way to get Windows to wake up
ths connection automatically, please?

One work-around I was thinking about was to create a batch file just
containing 'J:' in it. Running this in a DOS box does in fact wake up the
connection. I was then thinking of scheduling this to run every so often.
However, this does not seem terribly elegant. Is there a better way of doing
this?

Thanks for any help

Geoff

 

[Paul]

Whats Johns PC? XP Home or XP Pro?

Home can only take 5 PCS on a network. Pro
can take up to 10..

Is the 6 including John's. John's and 5 others?

 

[GB]

Whats Johns PC? XP Home or XP Pro?

Home can only take 5 PCS on a network. Pro
can take up to 10..

Is the 6 including John's. John's and 5 others?

Yes - 6 altogether. If that's a problem, one of the PCs can be left out as
it is just there temporarily. However, there is no problem with the
networking - it's just a question of waking up the connections.

Out of interest, one of the PCs has two shared disk drives. Does this count
as one PC or two?

 

[Paul]

Nope the 2 disk drives should count
as one if both are on one PC GB.

I wouldnt share the whole hdd (if thats what youre
doing, well if there's no os's on them).

A folder or folders, would be better. Well
if you get hacked, or something....you'll have
to reinstall XP. If files disappear.

Thats sounds OK 1+5 it should work. I take
it all the PC's are in the same workgroup? ie: MSHOME?

And they've all got sequential ips? ie: 192.168.0.x etc

If its only the main PC (XP) thats having probs
try going to My Computer/Tools/Folder Options/View
and unticking/ticking enable use simple file sharing then OK. See if that
fixes it. That'll save you adding each PC
as a "guest" if that's what you've done. And make sure
file / printing sharing is ticked thru the LAN icon.

 

[GB]

Nope the 2 disk drives should count
as one if both are on one PC GB.

I wouldnt share the whole hdd (if thats what youre
doing, well if there's no os's on them).

A folder or folders, would be better. Well
if you get hacked, or something....you'll have
to reinstall XP. If files disappear.

Thats sounds OK 1+5 it should work. I take
it all the PC's are in the same workgroup? ie: MSHOME?

And they've all got sequential ips? ie: 192.168.0.x etc

No, they have not got sequential IP addresses. I had not thought that would
matter. I can change them, of course, but why would that make a difference?

If its only the main PC (XP) thats having probs
try going to My Computer/Tools/Folder Options/View
and unticking/ticking enable use simple file sharing then OK. See if that
fixes it. That'll save you adding each PC
as a "guest" if that's what you've done. And make sure
file / printing sharing is ticked thru the LAN icon.

I'll check this, but I think we must be using the default, which I think is
simple file sharing,

Thanks for your help.

Geoff