[22h2] Staff laptop at home hangs

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

Staff can take their laptops and use from home, we use cached accounts and offline files.

 

Their home drive (H drive) is available thanks to offline files, but StaffShared, StudentShare etc, aren't. When staff use their laptops at home, they hang when they use Office apps. I believe this is due to the other network drives being disconnected.

 

What is the best way to deal with this? I was thinking if I made a script that they can use to delete the disconnected drives at home.

 

We are looking at setting up a VPN or Direct Access, but staff are really struggling until then.

 

Thanks

[Bird97]

Not sure how you do logons but we had a script at logon which detected if they are connected to the network you could do that and have the drives delete if they aren't connected

[Theldron]

Not sure how you do logons but we had a script at logon which detected if they are connected to the network you could do that and have the drives delete if they aren't connected

 

Hi @Bird97 that's exactly what I want to do, I vaguely remember having something similar years ago. Don't suppose you can point me in the right direction for that script? Cheers.

[Oaktech]

I have DirectAccess set up, because legacy, and on-prem, however the way the wind is blowing you might need to consider cloud 'stuff'.

[Mako]

As more data is going to SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive, since 2022 I've been connecting laptops directly to Azure (Entra). Due to some legacy drives and such they need a bit of manual attention during the initial setup, but after that they're good to go. I can't say that we're 'fully' inTune but for the most part the staff that have been issued a laptop have not had a single issue (outside of actual technical problems with the device e.g touchpad) and there's configuration profiles set up etc.

 

Since September, all new staff and students have Known Folder Move for OneDrive and I've deprecated home drives entirely. For any new staff with a device it means that they have a seamless experience. Existing staff are free to move their home drive data to OneDrive at their convenience then they can be moved onto the Known Folder Move on-prem.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Mako

[Theldron]

@Oaktech and @Mako thanks for your posts, this is something we are looking at just not there yet. Gave me some food for thought though. Thanks.

[Bird97]

Havent used it in a while and is vbs so is probably is a better way of doing it

 

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

sfile = "c:\SystemScripting\laptop.txt"sComputer = objNetwork.computername

sUser = lcase(objNetwork.UserName)If objFSO.FileExists("\\bla\NETLOGON\Local SystemScripting\ServerAvailable.txt") Then

Do Until NOT objFSO.FileExists (sfile)

objFSO.DeleteFile sfile, TRUE

Loop

Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile(sfile)

objFSO.CreateTextFile sfile, True

Do Until objFSO.FileExists (sfile)

Loop Wscript.QuitElse Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile(sfile)End If

Basically it looks for a network file and if it can see the network file it has network connection and creates a text file to be used for later checks if there's no connection it tries to delete the text file from previous logons so it shows its no connection.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Bird97

[Theldron]

Havent used it in a while and is vbs so is probably is a better way of doing it

 

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("Wscript.Network")

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

sfile = "c:\SystemScripting\laptop.txt"sComputer = objNetwork.computername

sUser = lcase(objNetwork.UserName)If objFSO.FileExists("\\bla\NETLOGON\Local SystemScripting\ServerAvailable.txt") Then

Do Until NOT objFSO.FileExists (sfile)

objFSO.DeleteFile sfile, TRUE

Loop

Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile(sfile)

objFSO.CreateTextFile sfile, True

Do Until objFSO.FileExists (sfile)

Loop Wscript.QuitElse Set objFile = objFSO.GetFile(sfile)End If

Basically it looks for a network file and if it can see the network file it has network connection and creates a text file to be used for later checks if there's no connection it tries to delete the text file from previous logons so it shows its no connection.

 

That gives me a good starting point, thanks.

[MartinByard]

Just a note, check for network printers as well as they give us issues in Office apps when off site.

[LeMarchand]

We map the drives via GPO and haven't had any reported problems at home.

[chaplic]

Rather than a login script how about attaching to a scheduled task when a change of network is detected? but overall I'd agree with others to find a way to actually allow users to have the functionality.

[Theldron]

Hmmm not sure what it is then. I get quite a few reports, when staff are using Office desktop apps, when they try to change orientation etc. It will say not responding. My first thought was the disconnected drives, but maybe not.

[Theo]

Yes, we did it exactly the same way.

[psydii]

where is appdata? are any office settings (templates etc) pointing to network shares? might there be images (watermarks, headers, footers etc) in the docs that originally started life on the network, it might even be printer/driver related where altering the page layout calls the driver, which in turn tries to make a network call the the printer/server (though I would have thought the symptoms would be way more commonly seen globally if this is the case) perhaps their default printer (or the printer selected for this document) is unusual.

 

Are their any special templates, plugins or macros loading? do any of these have dependencies on your servers - perhaps they are trying doing a repair install or reading a config file?

 

Do you have any monitoring software installed? Could this be trying to phone home or read configuration data and interfering with Office

 

Antivirus software - perhaps the offline files are all fine, but the AV software is getting confused and trying to bypass the cache and reach out to the servers?

 

Might be worth getting a trace from procmon and seeing what word is trying to access?

[brainchest]

It sounds like the issue is related to the disconnected network drives causing the laptops to hang when using Office apps at home. Creating a script to delete the disconnected drives at home could be a temporary solution. Setting up a VPN or Direct Access could provide a more reliable long-term solution for staff to access network resources from home.

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