Lost Mappings on Win XP

[Guest]

Hi at all

some of our XP-Clients (SP2) loose their network mappings without any error
messages in the eventlog. This can happen once or more in a week. The clients
are working in a W2K3-ADS network.

Has anyone any idea what is going wrong?

Thanks for any hints.
Gert

 

[Frankster]

Four points to consider...

1) Drive mappings are "remembered" from user profile settings. If a
different user logs on they may not have/want the same drives mapped.

2) Drive mappings are not specific to "clients", only user logons.

3) User profile drive mappings are notorious for being "lost" just as other
parts of the user profile sometimes get "lost" (e.g.. What happened to my
wallpaper?)

4) If you want consistent drive mappings, use a script. In its simplest
implementation you would place this script (batch file) into the All Users
Startup folder so that it is run every time anyone logs on. There are more
sophisticated ways in a domain environment.

-Frank

 

[Guest]

Hi Frankster

Thanks for your answer.
As I wrote in my first mail, the user works with a domain account. In the
profile section of the account we call a logon script to map the drives.
Normally the user can logon and is able to use all the mapped drives. After
an undefined time some user are missing one or all mapped drives.
Do you now an existing virus witch can produce this problem? How can I
monitor these unmapping phenomena’s?

Gert

 

[Frankster]

Well, it's the "After an undefined time" that's confusing me. I don't know
what to tell you except to try to narrow down the circumstances. Maybe
someone else had an idea.

-Frank

 

[Guest]

Thats also confusing to me.
I try to collect more informations.

Gert

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem. We were able to narrow it down to the use of a
multimedia card reader (internal 8-in-one usb based) and mapped network
drives. It appears that when the card reader is used, the mapped home drive
is lost (the drive letter assignment). When the user uses the media card and
ejects it, the home drive appears to drop out. It can be accessed in Internet
explorer but the user must log out and log back on to regain the drive
mapping.

I am clueless on a fix for this. I have even moved the mapped drives to the
end (X,Y & Z) and let the media drives (D-I) stay as they are. I still get
the same result. My network is 2003 AD with XP SP2 clients.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I have the same problem. We were able to narrow it down to the use of a
multimedia card reader (internal 8-in-one usb based) and mapped network
drives. It appears that when the card reader is used, the mapped home drive
is lost (the drive letter assignment). When the user uses the media card and
ejects it, the home drive appears to drop out. It can be accessed in Internet
explorer but the user must log out and log back on to regain the drive
mapping.

Is this the type of card reader which assings a drive letter only
when a card is inserted? Then inserting a card has the same effect
as attaching an USB drive. The first availlable local drive letter
is assingned by default. If there is a network share on this letter
XP doesn't care.

I've made a small Windows service that gives control over the drive
letter assingment. One option is to configure an exclude list. If
XP assings a letter that is on the exclude list, then the service
remounts the drive to another letter.
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

I am clueless on a fix for this. I have even moved the mapped drives to the
end (X,Y & Z) and let the media drives (D-I) stay as they are. I still get
the same result. My network is 2003 AD with XP SP2 clients.

This should definitely help. Maybe you had assinged an USB drive to X,
Y or Z a long time ago and XP still knows that.


Uwe