Mapping Home Drives with wierd results

[sreiach]

Im having a problem mapping home drives properly. On the wireless laptops we have sometimes the home drive doesnt get mapped properly and it goes to the root share.

 

Normally its just easy to tell them to logout/in and they get the drive.

 

However, I've had some students where it even refuses to do that. So decided to do some testing. I went to the command prompt. Deleted the mapping using.

 

net use h: /delete

 

Then i tried to remap using

 

net use h: /home

 

Thats where it gets interesting. The response outputs that it has mapped drive H: to \\server\share AND that my home is the full proper home UNC \\server\share\year\username

 

I don't get it. If it KNOWS the home UNC why doesnt it just map to it? I can manual map the drive without a problem. But when I use the HOME switch it maps to the root share. Any ideas?

[Oops_my_bad]

Welcome to the club. You and many more share your pain.

 

The only way I could get this working again (since it stopped working all of a sudden without explanation) was to make sure "wait for network" is enabled on the domain policy.

 

Not happy about it as it takes a bit longer for everyone to logon now but for me, was the only way to cure it.

[sreiach]

I noticed that policy before, but here's a silly question.. if the person takes the laptop home where there is no network.. uhh how long does it wait?

 

I know I could test this but if you have real experience with it..

 

Thanks.

[Oops_my_bad]

I know.. had the same concerns I just enabled it.. waited for the fallout the next day but there was none. Not even about a month after so can only assume it's fine

[timbo343]

wheres "wait for network" in group policy? This may be interesting for the laptops that dont have the Intell pre-wireless logon feature. Ie, the fujitsu's.

[OutLawTorn]

We are having a similar problem at the moment, however the pcs are using a wired connection. Most of the time they load the staff user drives properly, but intermittantly it doesn't. I've gone through and all staff have access to their own directories and nothing else, so their data is secure, but as some reports software uses U:\1_reports, as this doesn't exist it causes problems. Usually if the staff member logs off and back on its fine the next time around :S

 

I've tried the "wait for network" setting, and will have to monitor how it goes.

[meastaugh1]

Wait for network is in group policy: Computer Config>Admin Templates>System>Logon>Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon.

[contink]

Would something like a scripted wait_for_path("//server/path_to_shared_folder") work?

 

ie: testing for a network path until it gets access to it (with a timeout obviously)

 

That might have the desired effect without needing to enable that GPO setting

[chaz6]

For what it is worth, thankfully it is mandated where I work that users with laptops who wish to use the wireless network must have at least Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed and be joined to the domain so that the correct wireless connection policies are applied, and it seems to have reduced the number of calls we get with problems.

[timbo343]

Im having a problem mapping home drives properly. On the wireless laptops we have sometimes the home drive doesnt get mapped properly and it goes to the root share.

 

Normally its just easy to tell them to logout/in and they get the drive.

 

However, I've had some students where it even refuses to do that. So decided to do some testing. I went to the command prompt. Deleted the mapping using.

 

net use h: /delete

 

Then i tried to remap using

 

net use h: /home

 

Thats where it gets interesting. The response outputs that it has mapped drive H: to \\server\share AND that my home is the full proper home UNC \\server\share\year\username

 

I don't get it. If it KNOWS the home UNC why doesnt it just map to it? I can manual map the drive without a problem. But when I use the HOME switch it maps to the root share. Any ideas?

 

Have you tried re-creating the account? That sometimes works for me.

 

Also, do the kids have roaming profiles?? this can have an effect too.. i know that i am slowing moving the teachers over to vbs and the kids accounts are following suit.

 

These accounts used to have .bat logons and some how the drives become permantly locked so the account has to be re-created.

[timbo343]

Im having a problem mapping home drives properly. On the wireless laptops we have sometimes the home drive doesnt get mapped properly and it goes to the root share.

 

Normally its just easy to tell them to logout/in and they get the drive.

 

However, I've had some students where it even refuses to do that. So decided to do some testing. I went to the command prompt. Deleted the mapping using.

 

net use h: /delete

 

Then i tried to remap using

 

net use h: /home

 

Thats where it gets interesting. The response outputs that it has mapped drive H: to \\server\share AND that my home is the full proper home UNC \\server\share\year\username

 

I don't get it. If it KNOWS the home UNC why doesnt it just map to it? I can manual map the drive without a problem. But when I use the HOME switch it maps to the root share. Any ideas?

 

Have you tried re-creating the account? That sometimes works for me.

 

Also, do the kids have roaming profiles?? this can have an effect too.. i know that i am slowing moving the teachers over to vbs and the kids accounts are following suit.

 

These accounts used to have .bat logons and some how the drives become permantly locked so the account has to be re-created.

 

PS... this is how you spell.... weird.

[mattstevenson2005]

Hi

 

We have just built our new network, we have all users home folders stored on our SANs with the home folder path in AD set as for example \\cluster1\student$\intake2009\09bloggsj but when we log on as that user their home folder h:\ gets mapped to \\cluster1\students$ and that it does not seam to map to their own folder. I have enabled the "Always wait for network" option in group policy but it still does not seem to work, Any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Matt

[mekissa]

Instead of :

net use h: /home

Try this:

net use h: %homeshare%

 

We had the same issue since upgrading our fileserver to Win2k8, and the group policy setting didn't help.