Problem with directory/folder permissions

[Kim]

We had a power outage last week, and since then we've had
a number of issues where users on one side of the office
would get disconnected from their shared network drives,
and then my personal Outlook loses its' connection to the
server. Additionally, I have to go back in and reset
directory permissions each time this happens. The only
real error in the event log points to a lanmanager
disconnect issue, which I went through the proper steps
to fix. Please help?????

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Kim,

Not trying to sound facetious, but you might want to take this opportunity
to strongly urge to the Finance people to authorize a UPS for the servers -
at the very least!

Cary

 

[Guest]

Actually, all of the servers do have a backup power
supply and I have watched them work gracefully in
outages. That's what makes this problem really hard to
fix. I'm not sure if it's active directory, dns, or a
hardware problem causing grief. When my Outlook
disconnects itself from the Exchange server, I have to go
to the server to unlock my account. Any thoughts?

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Kim,

This does sound a bit strange. I am not sure how power outages - whether
you had UPS or not in place - would have anything to do with NTFS problems.
However, now I am not sure that you are talking about NTFS permissions or
account lockouts. Or maybe all of the above?

So, are you having problems with users not being able to access shared
folders ( and their contents ) when they used to be able to do so before the
power outage? Are the actual NTFS/shared permissions changing? Not sure
how that is happening ( especially if you have the UPS systems going ).

I am not sure what you mean by your last sentence. Is your user account
being locked out? Are you the only one whose user account is being locked
out? And what do you mean by 'locked out"?

I am not sure what you mean by "my Outlook disconnects itself from the
Exchange server". How is this happening? When the power goes out your
workstations shut down, correct? But your servers are still running - due
to the UPS systems. How long is the power outage lasting? Longer than the
UPS? Are you having to manually shut down the server(s) gracefully. How
many servers are we talking about? A Domain Controller? A separate File
Server? A separate Exchange Server? Outlook is going to rely on the
Global Catalog Server ( on the DC ) to find things. Same for the Exchange
Server.

HTH,

Cary

 

[Guest]

My problems are actually all of the above.

All of the users have a mapped "Z" drive for all of our
documents on the server. Yesterday, there were a couple
of times where I would have to reset the permissions on
that folder every half hour because it became
inaccessible to everyone in the office.

And what's more strange is that sometimes it's only half
the office. Another strange instance is that sometimes
only half of the office will lose connectivity to the
printers.

As far as my Outlook disconnecting itself from the
server, about every half hour or so I can be working away
in Outlook 2003 and I get a little notifier down by my
clock indicating I have lost my connection with the mail
server, then a logon box appears on the screen. When I
go into the server to look at my account, it is locked
out. No one else has complained about this so I'm
guessing it's only me. And as a test, I deleted and
recreated my account on the server last night, recreated
my mail profile, and when I got in this morning my
account was locked out again.

And there have been no power outages since last week.
I'm sitting here wondering if maybe the switch was
damaged by the abrupt loss of power last week.

As far as servers, we have a file server which is the
primary DC and hosts the "Z" drive for all of our users,
an exchange/isa server, and another server which hosts
our paperless documents.

I hope I answered all of your questions and really
appreciate any help or advice.

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Kim,

Sorry for disappearing on you.

Sounds like you have a bunch of stuff going on. I would suggest that you
make sure that you have your A/V software fully patched and that you run a
scan on all of your servers. I might also go to
http://housecall.trendmicro.com and let that run. This can take a couple of
hours so you might want to do it remotely after hours ( or do it and stay
late at the office! ).

You might also want to install the Support Tools on each of your WIN2000
Servers and run both dcdiag /e /c /v and netdiag /v. This will give us some
information that might be very useful. The Support Tools are located on the
WIN2000 Server CD as well as on the WIN2000 Service Pack CD in the Support |
Tools folder. I would go for the Service Pack CD - or download them from
the MS website. There are a bunch of extremely useful tools included in the
Support Tools. I strongly suggest to everyone that they do this - as a
general piece of advice!

I would also suggest to you that you go to the following link and download
the ALTOOLS.exe file:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...9c-91f3-4e63-8629-b999adde0b9e&DisplayLang=en

Create a folder somewhere on your File Server ( or workstation ) and simply
double click the altools.exe and designate the folder that you just created.
Several files/tools will be extracted to that folder. Take a look at
acctinfo.dll and LockoutStatus.exe. These two tools will be very helpful.
Alockout.zip and AlockoutXP.zip might also be very useful. You might want
to read the guide as it has some very useful troubleshooting steps. Is it
possible that you have a password policy in place and that you have used a
user account - such as Administrator or whatever - for some service? It
could also be that you used the Administrator account - or whatever - on
your A/V software on all of the workstations ( I am thinking McAfee here ).

HTH,

Cary