Network Drives Disconnecting

[mikethomson]

Firtsly, thanks to anyone for help on this, its got me stumped.

A customer I have has various network drives on their desktop. The drive connection is setup through login scripts so sorts it all out during network logon.

Once the logon script has completed ALL the drive mappings show the little red x under the drive until the user connects to them. You can connect to them when you click on them but when you try to run an shortcut where the executable is stored on the network drive it won't run the program saying it can't find the network drive.

This is a weird one, been through loads of different area's within Windows for security etc. I think it is possibly registry but not sure.

Anyone help with this?

 

[darranagl]

The Red X problem is usually caused by the mapping not being fully connected during logon but does become connected later.

In Win9x you can enable Quick Logon in the Client for Microsoft Networks (in Control Panel/Networking) to stop the Red X problem. I don't know of such a setting in Win2k (sorry).

If the users are getting alot of drives mapped at once try changing the script to only map a few drives to test the theory. New Zealand, a great place to live.

http://www.southland.org.nz

tokala@orcon.net.nz

 

[tlcg]

I am having the same problem - I have 9 computers networked and a mixture of WIN2k & NT4 operating systems. I only have this problem on the WIN2k computers.

If you come up with any answers - please forward - I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[tlcg]

Do you have multiple networks? I have Windows Network and a LAN.

 

[mikethomson]

We only have the one network (between 2000 & 3000 users). There are several domains to the network with users in certain areas accessing certain domains. The o/s ranges from Win95(A)+ to Win2k.

This problem is ONLY specific to Win2k machines. Just today we have found that this is now happening with Network Printers. At the moment we are considering a Software Rebuild but don't want to do this unless we have too.

Any help would be grately appreciated.

 

[tlcg]

Mike,

Just made this change within the hour, so I'm not sure if it has fixed the problem..........

Open you Network and Dial Up Connections Window and click once on the network. Now click the Advanced menu option, then Advanced Settings, then the Provider Order tab.

By placing the Microsoft windows Network to the first position, the problem has not been recurring. I'm going to test for a bit - I'll let you know.

 

[jem2112]

We had the same problem at my workplace. I found that when you enter the following command at a DOS prompt it fixes the issue.

"x:\>net config server /autodisconnect:-1"

Hope this helps.

-Jim

 

[GlenJohnson]

Have you tried taking it out of the login scripts and manually mapping and see what happens? Do they have rites to those drives? Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
gjohn76351@msn.com
"We will either find a way, or make one".
Hannibal (247-183 B.C.); Carthaginian general.

 

[ANormal]

Within the logon scripts you can do a:

net use * /d /y

to disconnect them all then do a re-connect directly after. This will insure a clean drive mapping every time to "know" available drive letters. I would "not" use a wildcard (*) either - only drive letters.

Example:

net use * /d /y
net use Z: \\servername\sharename_no_1 /p:y
net use Y: \\servername\sharename_no_2 /p:y
net use X: \\servername\sharename_no_3 /p:y


...and so on. First remove the shares then re-establish them and make the persistant in case of temporary network loss.

 

[Dmasch]

Try this reg hack. It works for my Win2k machines but do at your own risk. Backup registry before please

In the registry under hkey_local_ machine
under system then under controlset001 and controlset002
go to services then lanmanserver then parameters
to your right you should see a autodisconnect setting.
put this in hexadecimal
ffffffff should be 8 f's that will give you a

value of
4294967295.

Make a backup of your registry before you make any changes. This worked for me so I am basing it off that.
I made the changes to both of my controlsets.

 

[jakess]

i also experienced that W2K pc;s sometimes loose their connection to map network drives and also to network printers. We sometimes use W2K to control our network printers...for software setup and configuration. But it seems that W2K only allows a certain number of connections. We getting an error from W2K saying that the has reached the maximum allowed number of connections. Where do you change this setting as we cant connect more than say 5 pc's to a pc controlling the network printer.

 

[proudusa]

The maximum number of connections i believe is handled by the number of licenses given by the server (per seat or server).

I had the problem of the red X and only noticed it when i installed a windows 2000 pro station to test software prior to bringing new systems in. The problem was due to a DNS issue where the Server was not given the DNS suffix during an upgrade from NT to W2K (disjointed name space) therefore the computer was unable to properly resolve name to IP and would take 4-5 tries to finally access the resource.

My 2cents.

hope that helps

 

[Guest_imported]

For those having trouble with Win 2000 Pro automatically dis-connecting network connections, go the link below.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q138365

After I discovered the name to search for (autodisconnect) I was able to find this website. I believe this will answer all your questions!

 

[mikethomson]

Almost all the replies here have been tried previously. The only one not tried was the one given by 'Dmasch' which I have just tested but with no joy.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on this, your comments have allowed us to eliminate our suspicions.

Does anyone have anyhting else they have tried. We have looked on Technet but that doesn't seem to be much use. We are looking at a possible software rebuild as I don't think there are many other avenues to look at.

Thanks to all for your comments, much appreciated.

 

[jakess]

I'm using Win2000 Pro for workstations. What parameters do a need for the registry to change the autodisconnect so that it's disabled. Will this cause network problems on the pc. We use a login script to map a few network drives with drive letters whick get disconnected after a while plus we use Win2000Pro to run some of our network printers. As explained earlier users that is is connected to this workstation for network printing as loose their network connection saying it has lost the network connection.

 

[GlenJohnson]

If you've tried everything else, try looking at hardware issues, such as bad nics. Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
glen.johnson@insightbb.com
"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.
Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
Mark Twain (1835-1910); US writer.

 

[jakess]

Win2000 is saying that it cannot handle/allow anymore connections...so no-one else can connect to this pc once the maximum number of connections were reached. I'm using this pc as a network printer running W2K for workstations.
Somewhere in Win2000 there must be a setting that tells you how many TCP-IP printing connections you can establish.
There is no network hardware errors.

 

[tlcg]

I tried the following:

In the registry under hkey_local_ machine
under system then under controlset001 and controlset002
go to services then lanmanserver then parameters
to your right you should see a autodisconnect setting.
put this in hexadecimal
ffffffff should be 8 f's that will give you a

value of
4294967295.

with NO LUCK! the only temp fix I seem to have so far is to take this step as well as changing the provider order on the same machine. So far, so good -- although I continually access the drives, so I may be manually keeping it active.

Still waiting for a fix in KY..................

 

[Dmasch]

Jakess,
Win2k pro allows a maxium of 10 connections at one time to anything shared on it. That is hard coded in Win2k pro and cannot be upped. You will have to get Server edition if you want more connections to a machine.

The "reg hack" that I listed below is the only thing that I have done to get the red X's from appearing. I sorry to hear that it has not worked for you Mike.

Mike,
Just for a little test write a ping bat and put it in your problem machines scheduled tasks and have it run like every 5 minutes or so. What this will do is always make an attempt a request from the machine that it is mapped too. This is not a fix but it will tell you more what is going on. The ping bat can just be a simple ping 192.168.1.25 but of course using whatever ip address that you have. You could also ping by the name of the machine too. Just to see if it is a DNS problem.
The default setting I believe in Win2k is 15 minutes of no communication it will put the red X on the drive. Usually though if you double click on the drive with the X it will restore the connection though. The reg hack that I listed in previous post makes it so it never disconnects.
Hope this helps you get to the bottom of you problem

 

[Guest_imported]

I've experienced the same issue as Mike at the last 2 jobs I've been at. My experience is that it occurs in a mixed NT4 and 2000 environment. We have this issue on both our NT4 and W2k workstations, connecting to both NT4 and Windows 2000 Servers. We have set the autodisconnect to -1 on all servers which is what the reg fix from Dmasch was doing. We only run TCP/IP in a windows environment so it is not the bind order. Our domain is still an NT4 PDC so it is not DNS or any name resolution issues.
We use KIX32 to map our drive connections during logon and at the end of logon a portion of users get the red X on their network drives which causes Outlook to error when looking for PAB's etc. I've been through the MS site and all the Technet notes seem to refer to Autodisconnect etc. We are currently thinking it may be a slow network issue?
Any help or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.