Infuriating problem(s) trying to map network drives

[sidewinder]

Scenario:

 

Music department want local logons because domain logons are causing strange problems with some of their software, probably because students are non-admins. Fine with me

 

They also want to be able to access a shared folder from each machine, obviously so students dont have to save work on one single machine. Again, not a problem I thought.

 

First of all, permissions - I was under the impression that if NTFS permissions were set to 'everybody' then you wouldnt need to authenticate to connect, even on a non domain account? Apparantly you do.

So then I took a similar approach to how it works in peer to peer networks - you have an identical username with the same password on each machine. So on AD I created matching accounts to the local ones and gave them full control of the folder.

But it STILL asks for a username & password! Why??

 

Second problem - mapping the drives. I tried adding them as the local admin, worked fine but only added them for that single user. So logged on as the student local account (again local admin) and tried to map then.

But whenever I try to map the share through explorer I get the error

 

The mapped network drive could not be created because the following error has occurred: An extended error has occurred

 

Nothing logged in the event log. Makes no sense at all. It is a user that is a member of the local admins group and has the same rights as the built in local admin account.

Looked on google but what little mention of it there was seemed to be where someone is trying to map a share on a different domain to the one the PC was a member of, which is not the case here.

 

Also, I set up a test share on my desktop PC, which is still a member of the domain, and I could connect to that fine! But on a DC it doesnt seem to like it

 

I also tried to map it with net use via the command prompt, and got:

 

The user is not allowed to log on from this workstation

 

Finally, I tried using a startup script (since a login script would be no good as they are logging in locally) and while it added the drives, they appear with no names by them, just 'disconnected network drive' and another permissions error if you try to access them

 

This is driving me mad, I thought local accounts would be an easy way round this but it seems not

[DMcCoy]

The accounts wont match between the domain and the machines. The local accounts will be sending computername\username which the domain won't recognize. Can you actually browse to the shared drive as the local user?

[maniac]

How about leaving the machines on the domain, and adding your 'all students' group (or equivalent) as a local admin on the necessary workstations.

 

This is no more risk to the workstation than local logins, and no more risk to the network, as the admin rights are local to that workstation. Trying to connect to shared drives on a domain machine from a non domain computer is always problematic in my experience.

 

Mike.

[djm968]

I would try PowerUser first, that may give them enough.

[sidewinder]

How about leaving the machines on the domain, and adding your 'all students' group (or equivalent) as a local admin on the necessary workstations.

 

This is no more risk to the workstation than local logins, and no more risk to the network, as the admin rights are local to that workstation. Trying to connect to shared drives on a domain machine from a non domain computer is always problematic in my experience.

 

Mike.

 

Tried it, worked ok but then there were other things (probably GP settings) that were causing more problems.

So then I tried GP loopback so that when students logged onto those machines they would get minimum GP settings

So then I created some generic network accounts (eg year7music) with virtually no GP settings applied apart from a few to stop them fiddling with the network settings, but still no luck

 

What it seems to be according to the music technician is that presets and samples in Cubase dissapear using a domain account (yet he reckons its fine for him - with his domain account)

Perhaps this is to do with them going ahead and buying standalone versions of cubase rather than network ones, I dont know, but basically this whole issue has been dragging on for over a year and I just want an easy solution

 

What I might do then, if mapping a drive on a domain server is going to be an issue, I might set up a quick NAS box using an old machine down there

[maniac]

We have cubase running fine on domain machines here, we have 16 workstations in our music suite. It didn't need any adjustments to the security of the workstation from memory, and I've had no complaints from music staff that the program isn't working properly.

 

Have you tried running the software while running the utlities regmon and filemon to see what files and registry settings the software is trying to access? At a guess it's going to be a registry setting it can't read, so it doesn't know the location to find the samples and presets, or a file permission that's stopping access. Filemon and regmon will tell you if it's trying to access something that it can't find or can't access.

 

Mike.