Mac suddenly disconnected from Windows 2003 Server

[Guest]

hello

we are running an network:
Win2K Server (Domain controller, Active directory)
WIN SBS 2003 SERVER (just a fileserver)
PC's (WinXP)
Mac's (Panther)

mac communicate over SMB (seldom) and AFP (protocol install on win2003
server).
Lately the mac disconnects suddenly from server. this happens when we p.e.
work on photoshop doc laying on the server.

any setting we've overseen?

thx for hints and further instrctions...
tom

 

[GIbson \(msft\)]

Hello,
For the Macintosh disconnecting issue please try disabling the energy saver
as described below

If you use the Sleep mode to conserve energy set the Sleep mode to Never .
To do this:

1.On the Apple menu, click Control Panels , and then click Energy Saver .
2.In the Energy Saver dialog box, move the slider to Never in the Put the
system to sleep whenever it's inactive for box.
3.To customize these settings, click Show Details , and then adjust the
Separate timing for display sleep and the 4.Separate timing for hard disk
sleep sliders to different times.
5.Close the Energy Saver control panel to save the new settings

--
Regards,
Gibson
==========================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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[Guest]

hello gibson

thanx for the hint. we turned the energy saving already off. it's important
to know that the disconnection appears while one is working on the mac, not
when the mac tries to go to sleep mode or so.

recently even a share on a XP client was disconnected from the win 2003
server.

is there any other suggestions?

thank you

tom

 

[Jim Seifert [MSFT]]

I'll past a related thread below contains a related KB: The short
observation is Appletalk seems to be more maintain more reliable connections
when in mixed AFP 2.2 and AFP 3.x environments. Connecting via Appletalk
while slower should take care of the problem of disconnects if no other
resolution is found.

Old thread below:

Connections can be slept on a per connection basis - the Mac client may or
may not be in use at the time a connection is slept and applications with
files open on the shared volume may or may not generate the activity to keep
the connection open. If the server is receiving traffic from the client in
the required interval then the connections should not drop. This has been
our observation using the network monitor tool in previous investigations
and is why an afp incompatibility seems likely here. Using the network
monitor tool on the server and looking at the time stamps of the traffic
between the client and server during these drops can confirm.



NT 4 servers only supported afp over Appletalk connections while the newer
Windows server versions support afp over Appletalk and afp over TCP/IP. The
Mac clients will prefer afp over TCP/IP if the server supports it.
Appletalk itself generates enough network traffic when a share is mounted
that the connections don't get timed out. If you are supporting Appletalk
on your network then the clients should be able to force an Appletalk
connection to the server by using 'afp:/at/server' instead of afp://server
at the connect to server dialog. The connection type can be confirmed by
checking the properties on the share.




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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Okay, thank you. But surely the Macs would disconnect almost constantly if
that were the case? They are frequently idle for two minutes but only
disconnect a couple of times a day. Also, they seem to disconnect when
they
are in use rather then when idle. Sometimes, all Macs on the network will
disconnect at the same time and sometimes only one. There's no consistency
here.

I have replaced several NT servers with 2003 servers and the users are
demanding to know why things are worse now than they use to be with the
old
servers. I haven't got a convincing answer as yet...

Any thoughts?

 

[Mike]

Don't know if this will apply in your situation, but I solved problems
with my iMac (running 8.6) intermittently disconnecting from my Win2003
Server. I was using my iMac (with files residing on the server) at the
time it disconnected - so I knew it had nothing to do with Energy Saver
settings or network idle timeouts. The system event log on the W2K3
server showed Event ID 12061 "Session from user "<my username>" was
timed out and disconnected by the server. The IP address of the
Macintosh workstation is in the data." On the iMac the AppleShare
Server Messages contained an entry "<My Window's Server Name> (My
server's IP address> via TCP/IP. The file server's connection has
unexpectedly closed down [<time> on <date>]".

Mistakenly I was thinking that the server was timing the iMac out
because of inactivity/idleness because of threads I had read on
similiar topics. But after researching more I discovered that the
server can also disconnect a client if it fails to respond in a timely
fashion. I traced the problem down to a "Duplexer" extension that
Apple released that allows one to manually set their Mac's ethernet
speed & duplex manually (essentially disabling the built-in
auto-negotiation feature on Macs). I had installed the Duplexer
extension on my iMac many months ago when my server was runnning NT4.
Recently I upgraded my Windows server to 2003, after which this Mac
disconnect problem started. I solved the problem by simply removing
the Duplexer extension from the System\Extensions folder. Restarted
and now iMac stays connected...

My guess is that in newer Apple OSs, code equivalent to this Duplexer
tool is built into the Mac OS, causing disconnects. Don't know how you
would disable this in newer Mac OSs... So I guess I shall consider
myself lucky to still be on 8.6