Strange Problem with Mapping Network Drive

[Bigguy]

I had a case recently in a doctors office where there were 4 computers.
One machine was for the Reception area and the other 3 were Work
Station. All the machines were installed with XP Pro SP2. The doctor had
a software program that was designed to access the patients files from
any machine. It required that the Work Stations be mapped to the C:
drive on the Server, which was done and designated as Drive F:
For about a month everything went fine until getting a call one day
where they said one of the Work Stations couldn't access the server. I
went there and checked under My Computer and saw that the F: driver was
still showing albiet said "Disconnected" No matter what I did I couldn't
get that Mapped drive to work. The name of the server computer and
everything else was correct just wouldn't work.

Out of desperation I Mapped a G: drive with exactly the same attributes
and it was fine. Problem was that the software he had was designed to
work on a F: drive letter and it would have been a big under taking to
change it. I finally deleted it, not sure how because I couldn't seem to
delete it under My Computer, but after booting in Safe Mode and back
again they were gone. I Mapped the Server with the F: drive letter again
and this time it worked fine again.

Has anyone else ever heard of this type of occurance before?

TIA

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I had a case recently in a doctors office where there were 4 computers.
One machine was for the Reception area and the other 3 were Work
Station. All the machines were installed with XP Pro SP2. The doctor had
a software program that was designed to access the patients files from
any machine. It required that the Work Stations be mapped to the C:
drive on the Server, which was done and designated as Drive F:
For about a month everything went fine until getting a call one day
where they said one of the Work Stations couldn't access the server. I
went there and checked under My Computer and saw that the F: driver was
still showing albiet said "Disconnected" No matter what I did I couldn't
get that Mapped drive to work. The name of the server computer and
everything else was correct just wouldn't work.

Out of desperation I Mapped a G: drive with exactly the same attributes
and it was fine. Problem was that the software he had was designed to
work on a F: drive letter and it would have been a big under taking to
change it. I finally deleted it, not sure how because I couldn't seem to
delete it under My Computer, but after booting in Safe Mode and back
again they were gone. I Mapped the Server with the F: drive letter again
and this time it worked fine again.

Has anyone else ever heard of this type of occurance before?

TIA

You probably have a background session that has grabbed
the inaccessible drive letters. You can easily avoid this in
two ways:

a) Use UNC coding rather than drive letter mapping, or
b) Tell Windows to stop remembering past mappings and
assign the letters by script instead. Here is how it's done:
- Click Start/Run, then type this:
notepad "c:\documents and settings\all users\start
menu\programs\startup\netlogon.bat"
Put these lines inside the batch file:
@echo off
net use * /del /yes
net use /persistent:no
net use S: \\YourServer\SomeShare
ping localhost -n 5 > nul

This will solve your problem permanently. Note that I used
drive S: rather than drive F:. Using drive F: is a bad idea: It
will cause a drive letter clash the moment someone connects
a USB flash disk.

 

[Zebranet]

You probably have a background session that has grabbed
the inaccessible drive letters. You can easily avoid this in
two ways:

a) Use UNC coding rather than drive letter mapping, or
b) Tell Windows to stop remembering past mappings and
assign the letters by script instead. Here is how it's done:
- Click Start/Run, then type this:
notepad "c:\documents and settings\all users\start
menu\programs\startup\netlogon.bat"
Put these lines inside the batch file:
@echo off
net use * /del /yes
net use /persistent:no
net use S: \\YourServer\SomeShare
ping localhost -n 5 > nul

This will solve your problem permanently. Note that I used
drive S: rather than drive F:. Using drive F: is a bad idea: It
will cause a drive letter clash the moment someone connects
a USB flash disk.

I think you are right.
After checking into it I found that there were using a portable USB
drive that was being plugged and unplugged into the computer. I think
that drive was somehow taking over the F: drive on the computer and
screwing things up.