|I have a home user who is win 2k and logs on to their
|local machine then they VPN to the corporate lan. When
|doing so the mapped drives show to have a red X under the
|file explorer, or if trying to access it via Excel or word
|it says unavailable. If I click on the Red x mapped drive
|first in the file explorer all is well. How can I fix this
|so the user can access the files while VPN in directly
|from the program and not having to click on it via the
|file explorer first?
What type of VPN server is it? If it is a Windows server, if they make a VPN
connection that is "available to all users", then they may be able to connect
via VPN during logon by checking the "Log on using dial_up connection" box on
the logon screen, then selecting the VPN connection instead of a modem
connection. This way, the VPN is active before the drives get mapped, and
they will not be seen as disconnected. The logon and VPN
authentication/connection all happen in one step, and can either both use the
same Windows username/password, or these can be different. Also, logon
scripts will run, home directory will get mapped, and such, since it will act
almost like they are plugged directly into the corporate lan.
There is also the capability when setting up the connection to have it dial a
modem connection first, if that is needed to access the internet.
This may or may not be possible with non-Microsoft VPN servers.
There can be some difficulties in getting this to work if there are firewalls
on the home or corporate lan ends that are not set up to allow the needed
ports and protocols through - which ones depend on which VPN type is being
used (IPSec, L2TP, etc). There are usually 2 or 3 TCP/IP ports, and another
protocol like GRE that needs to be allowed through. The documentation on
getting this all to work seems to be very thin. This is probably only a
problem if the user has to do something else like authenticate to the firewall
before they make the VPN connection. If they do not currently have to do
this, the firewall is letting the VPN connection be made as it is.
If the VPN connection cannot be made until after logging on, try making the
drive connections non-persistent so that they do not automatically get
re-mapped when logging on - this may also make the logon faster, since it does
not try to connect to the "non-available before VPN" shares. Then create a
script that can be run after they make the VPN connection that will map the
drives.
You would probably use something like the following in the script:
NET USE X: \\SERVER\SHARE /PERSISTENT:NO
You can also add the /USER: option to supply a domain\username if they need to
connect to the share as a different user than they logged into Windows as.
