Windows 98 clients disconnect

[pigpen34]

We have a handful of Windows 98SE machines in remote locations that map a drive back to our Windows 2000 Advanced Server box. We can do a "find computer" by IP address or use "net use p: \\IP Address\Share Name" to get to the server. However, after a period of time (the length of time varies from machine to machine) the drive letter is no longer available. Searching for the computer no longer returns any results and "net use" does not work. The only solution seems to be to restart the Windows 98 clients. After a reboot, we are able to get the drive letter restored using either of the above methods. Any ideas? Thanks for your help.

 

[JoplinMo]

This is a known bug in the session control in Windows 98. It drops the connection after a period of inactivity, but the connection flag is not reset to show the drop. Then, when Win98 tries to re-establish the session, it can't because the session flag shows an existing session. We spent many hours talking to Microsoft tech support about this one. They eventually provided us with a patch that was supposed to cure this problem, but it messed up network connectivity.

This does not happen on all Win98 systems, of course. We have yet to determine what makes the difference.

The only real solution to this problem is to upgrade the workstations to Windows 2000 Professional.

Skip Tarrant
eXpert Data Solutions
Joplin, MO, USA