Disconnecting mapped drives

[Guest]

We have about 30 machines that connect to a particular file server. Fairly
frequently the windows 2000 (SP 4) machines appear to become disconnected and
won't reconnect to the network share. By disconnected I mean that:

- a 'red x' displays on the drive icon in Windows Explorer
- several programs including Excel (2002 and 2003) reports an error when
trying to save to the drive
- "net use" reports the status of the drive as disconnected

The mapped drive is still accessible and writable though. Nothing except
disconnecting all network drives and reconnecting them seems to reconnect the
drives and I can't seem to find a set of circumstances that causes this to
happen. None of our Windows XP machines experience any problems.

So far I've tried:

- turning off autodisconnect by running: "net config server
/autodisconnect:-1"
- mapping to the IP address of the server rather than the NETBIOS name.

Is there anything else I can try to help diagnose the problem?

 

[Phillip Windell]

That is all mapped drives are good for. Stop using them and use UNC paths.
You can have a Shortcut based on a UNC path that is either on the Destop or
placed in the Users "My Documents" and it will give the appearance of being
just another folder in that location. If our users can figure this out I
know yours can.

Don't make one for every share, you would end up with shortcuts all over the
place. If a server has multiple shares on it just create a Shortcut to the
Server and the Shares will show up when they open the Shortcut.

 

[Guest]

Hi Phillip,

Are you trying to say the the problem I'm having can't be fixed or that you
just don't know enough about mapped drives to fix it?

Part of our problem is a legacy application that requires the network shares
but doesn't recognise UNC paths (or long file names) so just using shortcuts
isn't going to help us.

That is all mapped drives are good for. Stop using them and use UNC paths.
You can have a Shortcut based on a UNC path that is either on the Destop or
placed in the Users "My Documents" and it will give the appearance of being
just another folder in that location. If our users can figure this out I
know yours can.

Don't make one for every share, you would end up with shortcuts all over the
place. If a server has multiple shares on it just create a Shortcut to the
Server and the Shares will show up when they open the Shortcut.

--
Phillip Windell [MCP, MVP, CCNA]
www.wandtv.com

We have about 30 machines that connect to a particular file server.
Fairly
frequently the windows 2000 (SP 4) machines appear to become disconnected
and
won't reconnect to the network share. By disconnected I mean that:

- a 'red x' displays on the drive icon in Windows Explorer
- several programs including Excel (2002 and 2003) reports an error
when
trying to save to the drive
- "net use" reports the status of the drive as disconnected

The mapped drive is still accessible and writable though. Nothing except
disconnecting all network drives and reconnecting them seems to reconnect
the
drives and I can't seem to find a set of circumstances that causes this to
happen. None of our Windows XP machines experience any problems.

So far I've tried:

- turning off autodisconnect by running: "net config server
/autodisconnect:-1"
- mapping to the IP address of the server rather than the NETBIOS name.

Is there anything else I can try to help diagnose the problem?

 

[Phillip Windell]

Are you trying to say the the problem I'm having can't be fixed or that
you
just don't know enough about mapped drives to fix it?

I have never seen if fixed dependably, and have never seen a solution that I
would call a real solution. The only thing I have seen suggested is to
increase the timeout value,...but no matter what you set that
to,...eventually, it is going to timeout (and it needs to, it's that way for
a reason). Regaurdless of the timeout value, they are supposed to instantly
reconnect "on demand" and that is where they fail. So, I guess I have no
solid solution.

Part of our problem is a legacy application that requires the network
shares
but doesn't recognise UNC paths (or long file names) so just using
shortcuts
isn't going to help us.

I don't know what to tell you there. Maybe the writers of the App need to
come out of the dark ages and write a version that doesn't require a "mapped
drive".