topic Re: Problem mapping drives in Networking

Problem mapping drives

Barry Hunter — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 09:35:00 GMT

Folks,

I have a three system network with a Win2K server DC, a WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro workstations.

I can map drives on my WinXP box to both the two 2K boxes but every time I map a drive to the WinXP box from the Win2K pro box, the map works but disappears a short time later.

Not even a reboot is needed to make the mapped drive disappear.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Barry

Re: Problem mapping drives

Roger Faucher — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:57:28 GMT

Barry:

Are you running SP1 on the WINXP system and SP4 on both WIN2K systems. Have you remained current with the Critical and Recommended updates from www.windowsupdate.com?

Roger

Re: Problem mapping drives

Rune J. Winje — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 16:22:52 GMT

Some issues can normally cause this (if we are talking about disconnected ("red X") mappings:

1) Autodisconnect feature:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297684&Product=win2000

2) WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro have limits of 10 inbound connections.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;122920&Product=win2000

3) Network connectivity issues

4) Some software is known to disconnect network drives (Roxio CD burning, etc...)

Cheers,
Rune

Re: Problem mapping drives

Ron Kinner — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 16:32:22 GMT

Are we talking DHCP addresses or static? If static it might help to add entries to LMHOSTS or HOSTS for the other PCs. Could be that there is a problem resolving names.

Do you map by name or by IP address?

Is there anything in the Event Viewer?

Ron

Re: Problem mapping drives

Barry Hunter — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 12:48:42 GMT

Many thanks for all your respones:

Roger:

Yes - WinXP has SP1 and both Win2k machines have SP4. All three machines are upto date on all updates.

Rune:

I dont mean red X disconnections to the mapped drives. They completely disappear after a few minutes.

Ron:

All machines have static IP addresses. No other problems relating to DNS happen. All machines are mapped using names.

It only seems to be a problem with my Win2k pro box mapping to the WinXP box. The Win2k pro box can map (and keep mapped) to the Win2k server.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Barry

Re: Problem mapping drives

Ganesh Babu — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:25:41 GMT

have u checked the option of

"automatically reconnect during logon" while mapping the drive??

Ganesh

Re: Problem mapping drives

Ron Kinner — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 17:36:10 GMT

Rumor has it that if the server does not think it has enough licenses for all its clients it will shed them when you aren't looking. You can lie to it about the number of client licenses you have.

Worth a shot anyway.

The other possibility since you map with names would be a name to ip problem. You could try mapping to their IP address. Just use \\A.B.C.D and if that holds then you just need to edit the \winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (and/or lmhosts) file to add them.

Ron

Re: Problem mapping drives

Jon Finley — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 00:35:00 GMT

Can you still access the mapped drive from command prompt level? i.e. dir f: dir z: ??

There is a known problem where the drive letters will disappear from explorer, or from "My Computer" but will still be accessable from the cmd prompt level.

This will be fixed with SP2.

Jon

Re: Problem mapping drives

Barry Hunter — Sat, 13 Dec 2003 21:50:56 GMT

Folks,

I seemed to have found a workaround.

Although I don't really want to do this, if I select reconnect at logon, the mapped drives have not so far disappeared.

Job done although I would have been interested to know why they were going AWOL before.

Thanks chaps,

Barry