Bob,
You have been incredibly helpful to me, but I still don’t think I completely
understand. First off – I have to tell you, that your diagnosis of my “Save
as†problem being caused by mapped Network Drives is 100% accurate. Last
night, I went into my VPN and accessed data for the company I work for
(including the mapped drives) and tried to do a “Save as†and it worked
perfectly – no hanging at all! But - as soon as I got out of the VPN and went
back to doing the normal day to day stuff, the “save as†hung up again. So,
you were right on! Since this was a new PC, I also contacted Dell Tech.
Support who suggested things like too much memory being used; too much
running in the startup programs, reinstall XP, etc. of which none of this was
obviously my issue. So, I just wanted to say Thanks. Now onto business.
I read your instruction from yesterday, but I am confused. Let me try and
paraphrase what I think I need to accomplish based on your advice. It sounds
like when I first boot up, the computer is trying to map networks that it
can’t find or are disconnected. And that makes sense because the mapped
drives will only properly activate when I get into my company’s firewall
through the VPN. I had this same VPN software installed in Windows ME, but
did not have this problem because I think what you told me was the system was
only attempting to map the needed drives once I went successfully into the
VPN. Therefore, the 90% of the time that I didn’t need the VPN, there was no
conflict because ME was not looking for those drives. I think you’re telling
that XP is looking for those drives during normal startup and obviously not
finding them, thus creating conflicts. Do I understand the issue properly?
So, my parochial view of this problem is that I need XP to act like ME and
not try and map anything at normal startup (only VPN). But – I think you’re
telling that there’s no way of doing that. You asked me if I knew how they
got mapped and can I do it myself. The answer is yes to both questions. My
company has provided me with two IP addresses, which represent the drives
that I need to use to get to the company servers which store the information
needed. When I first mapped the drives, I had to get into the VPN (using
IPSEC) and then I right clicked on My Computer – Map Network Drives. I
designated a drive letter (ie: U) and typed in the IP Address and all the
other relevant information into the Folder line and then checked off
“reconnect a logonâ€. At that point when I hit Enter, a dialog box was brought
up that asked me to type in my Windows logon information / password that I
use for my company. Once I did that, the folders that were needed popped up
and the drive was accessible. So yes – I could “disconnect†them if need be,
although sometimes they are temperamental and don’t always re-map properly.
I’d rather not do that if I had my choice.
I didn’t follow your suggestion yet which was to disconnect the drives and
see if they restore on the next boot – but even if they do, what good is
that? You said, I’d be good to go, but don’t understand why? I take your
instruction to mean that for the 90% of the time that I don’t use the VPN, I
have to go through and manually disconnect the drives? Please clarify as
maybe I misunderstood. Remember – the only time, I even need these drives are
when I log on to the VPN to access my company information. If I have to do
the BAT file thing I can , but I these drives are temperamental as I
mentioned above.
Seems to me we have to figure out a way to get XP to not look for these
drives in the initial boot up and then only ask to reconnect to them, once we
get into the VPN. Seems easy, but I’m guessing its difficult. I know I
babbled here, but I wanted to give you a little more detail of what is
happening. Thanks for any additional suggestions you might have.
