Network drive access issue

[speckytecky]

Had an issue over the past week or so where a few users using Vista and Windows 7 PCs are not picking up their usual network drives. No problem in the past - where do I start looking to resolve this issue please folks?

[speckytecky]

Umh not thoughts on this then folks - going to try a reboot of the server when staff go home - hope that might wake things up but suspect it's a deeper Vista / Windows 7 issue?

[speckytecky]

Further on this:

just carried out a server update and reboot - that's not cured the problem. The drives are all visible, my specific one is accessible, the content can be seen but won't open with a message drive off line?

[kmount]

Try browsing to the unc server path to where the drive should be?

[ChrisH]

This seems a common thing to me. We are still on Server 2003 with a few Windows 7 clients and it seems if there is the briefest of interruptions to the network they come disconnected and even when available again they do not allow you to click back on them likw XP would. These are mapped drives as well.

[speckytecky]

Thanks Chris and Kim. Tried the UNC path - no joy.

Message telling me 'drive offline'.

Looks like I'm going to have to bung XP on best part of 20 pcs!

[Killer_Bot]

We had a similiar issue a week or so back where 1 student would seemingly lose all mapped drives on one particular machine but be fine elsewhere. Turned out it was something to do with the 'offline files' cache.

Disabled the 'offline files' functionality on that machine and it resolved the issue. We used to rebuild the workstations when it happened but now we can just logon as an Admin, disable the offline caching and the issue is resolved.

Could be worth checking before you go crawling back to XP

[speckytecky]

Thanks Killer_Bot. Turned off the ofline files, did a reboot still no access. Tried again still blocked. Then turned off the Sophos Firewall and yippee now have a happy pc.

We had a similiar issue a week or so back where 1 student would seemingly lose all mapped drives on one particular machine but be fine elsewhere. Turned out it was something to do with the 'offline files' cache.

Disabled the 'offline files' functionality on that machine and it resolved the issue. We used to rebuild the workstations when it happened but now we can just logon as an Admin, disable the offline caching and the issue is resolved.

Could be worth checking before you go crawling back to XP

[Killer_Bot]

Local Firewalls are more trouble than they are worth if you ask me Was going to suggest deleting any profiles that were cached locally via the 'Computer' properties user profiles tab as I've found sometimes I have to do that after disabling offline files before it works. Sounds though it was the firewall in your case though, atleast you figured it out.