Problem with Mapped Drives

[Guest]

I have a Win2000 network and now have around 20 new XP Pro machines on it.
Every user has at least one drive mapped to one of our servers to store
files. Every so often, for no reason that I have figured out, when trying to
access a mapped drive it hangs up and you are asked for a username and
password. This happens to me with my perminatly mapped drives and new ones I
make on the fly. No username or password seems to work, and the easiest way
to get it to work correctly is to reboot. This only happens with the XP
machines.
Has anyone else seen this or have a suggestion as to why or what I need to
change?

 

[Guest]

I've not seen this problem, perhaps the server is restricted to the number of
open share sessions? Just a guess?

Also, I'm assuming you are using the explorer>tools>map network drive...you
may try this from the command line:

 

[Guest]

I don't have an answer, but I have seen this happen when our customers
upgraded their workstations to WinXP from Win2K Professional and Win98.
Nothing was changed on the server, but the persistently mapped drives became
less reliable, prompting for user name and password. Sometimes you can logon,
sometimes you can't.

It's even worse in a peer-to-peer environment - timeouts when browsing
shared folders, sometimes working, sometimes not. These we fix by adding
netbeui to the lan adapter and no more problem. Not sure you can/want to do
that in a client-server environment, especially if you are tied to other
geographic locations.

 

[Guest]

These are all new workstations, I didn't upgrade them, but I will try that
and see if it works for me too.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I don't have an answer, but I have seen this happen when our customers
upgraded their workstations to WinXP from Win2K Professional and Win98.
Nothing was changed on the server, but the persistently mapped drives
became
less reliable, prompting for user name and password. Sometimes you can
logon,
sometimes you can't.

It's even worse in a peer-to-peer environment - timeouts when browsing
shared folders, sometimes working, sometimes not. These we fix by adding
netbeui to the lan adapter and no more problem. Not sure you can/want to
do
that in a client-server environment, especially if you are tied to other
geographic locations.

If NETBEUI fixed the problem then the problem was probably DNS or NETBIOS
related. Installing NETBEUI will sometimes help if DNS is mixed up or
NETBIOS is not working right. If the workstations are in a domain then I'd
suspect DNS. If peer to peer or workgroup then NETBIOS. Installing NETBEUI
is a bandaid for a symptom, not a fix for a problem.

Kerry

 

[Guest]

:

If NETBEUI fixed the problem then the problem was probably DNS or NETBIOS
related.
Installing NETBEUI will sometimes help if DNS is mixed up or
NETBIOS is not working right. If the workstations are in a domain then I'd
suspect DNS. If peer to peer or workgroup then NETBIOS. Installing NETBEUI
is a bandaid for a symptom, not a fix for a problem.

Well, let's take a little closer look at this...

I have seen several situations where win98 machines worked reliably in
peer2peer for years, and then XP machines were either added, or some of the
98 machines were upgraded to xp. After this happened, the 98 machines
continued to work, but the xp did not work reliably (sometimes works,
sometimes doesn't) when browsing shares, or trying to access persistently
mapped drives. Didn't seem to matter whether the share was on an XP or a 98
machine - xp had problems accessing them and 98 did not. Nothing changed with
respect to DNS settings (the only DNS server involved was that of the ISP,
which certainly didn't have their workstations in its database).

Since there is only one configurable item in XP's Client for Microsoft
Networking, this problem is occurring on a lower level that is not accessible
to the user. Either Win98 was doing it wrong (but it worked) or XP is doing
it wrong when running netbios over tcp/ip. Win2k Prof does not have this
problem. Both Win2k and XP use the same BSD ip stack, but for some reason, MS
removed Netbeui as a default choice in xp.

In the domain scenario, the DC is handling DNS. Again, we have seen win98
work without these issues and XP does not work reliably with persistently
mapped drives. It should be noted that not all sites exhibit this problem. We
have one site that is running SBS2000 and all XP workstations, using just
netbios over tcp/ip, and they have never had this issue. The other customer
has SBS 2003. Both of these are running ISA server which means they were
going through the server to get to the internet.

No problems are seen at either site accessing the internet (other than
occasional DSL outages), so I would have to wonder why it would have a
problem on just the local/client net. That leaves netbios...

While it may seem to be a band-aid, getting the customer going is our main
priority, and theirs. So far, Microsoft has not given me any medals or other
compensation for the bugs I've found while doing field QA on their products,
so there is no incentive for me to fire up the debugger and find out what is
really going on when I have a fix in my back pocket. We deal with mostly
small businesses - if I was MIS overseeing a significant number of
workstations, I would feel differently.

 

[Kerry Brown]

:



Well, let's take a little closer look at this...

I have seen several situations where win98 machines worked reliably in
peer2peer for years, and then XP machines were either added, or some of
the
98 machines were upgraded to xp. After this happened, the 98 machines
continued to work, but the xp did not work reliably (sometimes works,
sometimes doesn't) when browsing shares, or trying to access persistently
mapped drives. Didn't seem to matter whether the share was on an XP or a
98
machine - xp had problems accessing them and 98 did not. Nothing changed
with
respect to DNS settings (the only DNS server involved was that of the ISP,
which certainly didn't have their workstations in its database).

Since there is only one configurable item in XP's Client for Microsoft
Networking, this problem is occurring on a lower level that is not
accessible
to the user. Either Win98 was doing it wrong (but it worked) or XP is
doing
it wrong when running netbios over tcp/ip. Win2k Prof does not have this
problem. Both Win2k and XP use the same BSD ip stack, but for some reason,
MS
removed Netbeui as a default choice in xp.

In the domain scenario, the DC is handling DNS. Again, we have seen win98
work without these issues and XP does not work reliably with persistently
mapped drives. It should be noted that not all sites exhibit this problem.
We
have one site that is running SBS2000 and all XP workstations, using just
netbios over tcp/ip, and they have never had this issue. The other
customer
has SBS 2003. Both of these are running ISA server which means they were
going through the server to get to the internet.

No problems are seen at either site accessing the internet (other than
occasional DSL outages), so I would have to wonder why it would have a
problem on just the local/client net. That leaves netbios...

While it may seem to be a band-aid, getting the customer going is our main
priority, and theirs. So far, Microsoft has not given me any medals or
other
compensation for the bugs I've found while doing field QA on their
products,
so there is no incentive for me to fire up the debugger and find out what
is
really going on when I have a fix in my back pocket. We deal with mostly
small businesses - if I was MIS overseeing a significant number of
workstations, I would feel differently.

I'm in the same situation, mostly small business clients who want it working
right now. I have also used NETBEUI (although I prefer IPX/SPX) as a quick
way to get things working. I let the client know what I am doing and why. In
most cases they say get it working now. In the cases where they want it
fixed properly it can take many hours of troubleshooting with browstat,
ipconcifg, and nbtstat to figure it out. It is usually a combination of many
things. Deleting all protocols on win9x machines and then reinstalling
TCP/IP and making sure only one browser master is active sometimes fixes the
problem. If it doesn't it can take a long time to troubleshoot. Also using
UNC names rather than mapped drives usually fixes the problem although some
older apps won't work this way. There definitely seems to be a difference in
the way NETBIOS over TCP/IP works with XP.

Kerry