Network Share Question

[Clint Brown]

My employer has a large internal TCP/IP network and also has PCs scattered
across the country. These PCs connect to the Internet via a variety of
ISPs, then use a VPN tunnel.

I have a Windows batch file that pulls data from each location using a
network share. Each location, of course, has its own share. Assuming the
name of the share is \\xyz, I access the data from the hard drive using
\\xyz\c$.

Once the data has been pulled from the locations, a list of locations that
have missing data is generated. This list is used to run a suite of tests
to check for connectivity issues. These tests include pinging the location
and other things.

The test in question is for confirming the availability of the network
share. The syntax is:

if not exist \\xyz\c$\winnt\system32\share.exe echo SHARE error >>error.log

The log is reviewed later in the day. At that time the reviewer is able to
do a directory listing using:

dir \\xyz\c$\winnt\system32\share.exe

and it works okay.

My question is whether this is an acceptable method for testing the ability
to access the network share. Also, why is it that the share appears to be
unstable? Is it a matter of a timeout issue? Could it be from multiple
processes trying to access the share at the same time?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Without knowing what these "PCs" are, it's hard to say why connectivity is
lost. If each PC is a Windows 2000 Workstation, these computers would be
limited to only ten simultaneous connections and perhaps the number of local
connections plus your remote connection exceeds ten.

A perusal of your event logs on both the remote and local PCs will likely
tell you why you can't connect at any given time.

 

[Clint Brown]

I finally figured out the answer and am posting it in case in helps
anyone else. I discovered the user ID used by the automatic job did
not have permission to the network share. That explains why they
failed during the early morning run but did not fail when others
interactively tested the shares later in the morning.

Now I'm going to my corner, wearing my dunce cap. It's too bad that
it was me and not our networking staff that figured it out. It
doesn't say much for our "experts".

Thanks to all who attempted to help within this forum!