The Mystery of The Disappearing Mapped Drives

[Jamo]

Hi all,

Strange problem which has arisen from installing Windows 7. Some users are experiencing a problem where a mapped drive will suddenly disappear and will refuse to reconnect. Unfortunately it is the staff shared drive so it is quite annoying!!

The server is a 2003 server with offline caching turned off. What is odd is that the share will not reconnect at all, the drive mappings are set as persistent so in theory should reconnect when disconnected. However it just doesn't try and errors with Network Path Not Found.

Anyone else seen this?

[glennda]

can the devices ping the server in which this mapped drive is located? no rouge DNS entries for it?

[Jamo]

can the devices ping the server in which this mapped drive is located? no rouge DNS entries for it?

No its strange as the devices will work then suddenly stop. Only a reboot sorts it, logging on and off doesn't seem to let it reconnect. The leases are over a day for both DHCP and DNS so it shouldn't be that, also another share on the same server works :s

[glennda]

No its strange as the devices will work then suddenly stop. Only a reboot sorts it, logging on and off doesn't seem to let it reconnect. The leases are over a day for both DHCP and DNS so it shouldn't be that, also another share on the same server works :s

Yes but if there is a dodgy dns entry for your server in DNS - when the initial cached dns record expires and it does a lookup again it may be being given the wrong dns entry.

Or it could actually be an issue with the network card - can the users access the internet while not able to connect to the mapped drive.

[Jamo]

Oh yeah everything else works fine, internet, other network shares, just the one mapped share (that we have noticed so far, Windows 7 has only been in place for 3 weeks...). The server can be reached on other shares so its not related to DNS

[glennda]

Oh yeah everything else works fine, internet, other network shares, just the one mapped share (that we have noticed so far, Windows 7 has only been in place for 3 weeks...). The server can be reached on other shares so its not related to DNS

The share isn't set to having max connections by accident is it? If windows 7 drops the connection - another client users it against the server and then when the previous client tries to reconnect it hits the limit?

I'm not really sure to be honest just guessing now!!

[Jamo]

The share isn't set to having max connections by accident is it? If windows 7 drops the connection - another client users it against the server and then when the previous client tries to reconnect it hits the limit?

I'm not really sure to be honest just guessing now!!

Yeah its odd isn't it!! I checked the max connections and its already set to maximum. Just had another email from staff with the same problem!

Seems to be related to Error 0x80070035 Network path not found or Windows 7 looses access to network share when disconnect from wired connection both look really odd though!!

Considering moving the share to a 2008r2 server as it was in the original plan anyhow.

So far Windows 7 has been such a pain to implement, so many little niggles its actually ridiculous!!

[round2it]

have you tried removing the share and adding it again on the server worth a go

[Jamo]

Not yet, its such an odd thing, looks like it could be to do with the switch between wired and wireless connections. The fault usually happens when a user 'undocks' the laptop and goes wireless, next time they check they cannot access the connection at all for the shared drive, but can access the other shares on the server. So no DNS, and I have noticed its not just related to the one server either

[Davit2005]

Sorry can't offer a resolve might narrow down the problem.
I had the same issue on 2 workstations on Monday that are connected through the same switch to the same server shares. There are other workstations of the same build connected to the same switch without issue.

Interestingly the particular mapped drives are done by User preferences not logon scripts in the NETLOGON folder.

1. We have BGINFO and that was reporting that it could not find files in the NETLOGON folder when any users logged on.
2. There was another server share connected to a different server through User Preferences and that connection was fine.
3. None of the drives are set as persistant.



Interestingly the particular mapped drives are done by User preferences not logon scripts in the NETLOGON folder.

I had a look through the logs on both machines and couldn't find anything that highlighted an issue.

We have had Windows 7 since last summer and the File server is still running the on the same 2003 box.

A restart sorted the issue in both cases.

[Jamo]

More Details:

Ours are all done through GPP and are persistent.
Mapped to a 2003 server


Screenshot of the error below:
Path.png


It will be connected and then suddenly next time you go to use it you will see the error above. Nothing bar restarting will reconnect the drive. Weirdly the O drive which is on the same server is connected and working fine!!!!

[sted]

is caching enabled on the share?

[Dom_]

Is the L: drive their home drive? I've had issues when it's set to map through GPP and AD - removing from GPP seems to resolve?

[Jamo]

Caching was enabled on the share, the reason we turned it off was that we didn't want the ability for staff to use the massively shared drive at home and cause conflicts as it would be likely that they would never be resolved. Weirdly we noticed that Windows had decided to sync random files DESPITE setting the options to stop other shares being synced... we only noticed this when a staff member came to us with a drive which only showed the files which were syncing!!! So the drive had disconnected and was 'offline' but the computer was 'online' as such, able to get other shares from the same server and access the internet.

What isn't clear so far is if other drives are disconnecting and going into Offline mode without anyone noticing, the shared drive (L is obviously quite heavily used so it will be the one people notice.

[sted]

Caching was enabled on the share, the reason we turned it off was that we didn't want the ability for staff to use the massively shared drive at home and cause conflicts as it would be likely that they would never be resolved. Weirdly we noticed that Windows had decided to sync random files DESPITE setting the options to stop other shares being synced... we only noticed this when a staff member came to us with a drive which only showed the files which were syncing!!! So the drive had disconnected and was 'offline' but the computer was 'online' as such, able to get other shares from the same server and access the internet.

What isn't clear so far is if other drives are disconnecting and going into Offline mode without anyone noticing, the shared drive (L is obviously quite heavily used so it will be the one people notice.

is it worth trying creating a new share on teh same folder new name and sharing that as drive m (for instance) see if that goes as well?