Outlook & Mapped Drive Problems Over VPN

[Rafael]

Please could someone help?

I have a laptop running Windows XP Professional. I connect to the
corporate network via a VPN using Netgear ProSafe VPN Client. This
connection is established without problems.

I have 2 issues once connected over the VPN and these may or may not
be related:

1. Outlook will open however, it will not connect. I just see it
trying to connect and then it says 'Disconnected' in the bottom right
of the screen.

2. I cannot access the mapped drives to the corporate server either.
When I click on them to open, I get a message which reads as follows:

"An error occurred while reconnecting DRIVE to \\SERVER\SHARE,
Microsoft Windows Network: The local device name is already in use.
This connection has not been restored."

I'm fairly certain it's not the firewall (McAffee) as I get the same
problems even with the firewall disabled entirely.

Outlook configuration and mapped drives point to the server name but
I'm also fairly certain it's not name resolution as I've updated the
'hosts' file accordingly.

Everything works perfectly connected to the LAN.

I'm happy to answer any questions if further info is required. What
could it be? Any suggestions most welcome!

Thank you in advance.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Please could someone help?

I have a laptop running Windows XP Professional. I connect to the
corporate network via a VPN using Netgear ProSafe VPN Client. This
connection is established without problems.

Apparently not!

I have 2 issues once connected over the VPN and these may or may not
be related:

1. Outlook will open however, it will not connect. I just see it
trying to connect and then it says 'Disconnected' in the bottom right
of the screen.

Can you ping your Exchange server by name?

2. I cannot access the mapped drives to the corporate server either.
When I click on them to open, I get a message which reads as follows:

"An error occurred while reconnecting DRIVE to \\SERVER\SHARE,
Microsoft Windows Network: The local device name is already in use.
This connection has not been restored."

Can you ping your server by name?
I'd recommend using a batch file login script rather than having Windows
remember the drive mapping.

net use * /del
net use x: \\server\share /persistent:no
net use y: \\server\anothershare /persistent:no

I'm fairly certain it's not the firewall (McAffee) as I get the same
problems even with the firewall disabled entirely.

Outlook configuration and mapped drives point to the server name but
I'm also fairly certain it's not name resolution as I've updated the
'hosts' file accordingly.

Well, can't say for sure. And you don't want to use hosts - you want to use
DNS & WINS, and if that isn't possible, LMHOSTS.