Home Drive Dropping

[mattx]

Bit of a long shot but we have a new set of laptops [ Ergo ] which when users logon, after a while their home drive drops. Other networked drives are ok.

All other laptops on site [ over 60 ] don't seem to have this problem - I'm thinking it's most probably the wireless chipset. [ Can't remember the exact chipset but it's a Realtek ] but I find whats odd is that's in their home drive.

The only other change I have done over the summer was the data migration over to the SAN but no other users have reported this on the other laptops so I am sure it's chipset related.

I'll check the driver version and will turn up the roaming aspect and power settings on the drivers but I am wondering if anyone else has seen this. [ Like I said a long shot but it will be interesting to know ]

I will also knock up a quick script which will re-map the drive if it gets dropped but it would be interesting to work out the actual cause.

Problem is with everything else on my plate now I don't really get much time to investigate these kind of problems long term.

[Michael]

Have you tried creating a secondary wireless network with no security, then build it up to WEP, WPA?

 

How are you mapping your home drives?

[mattx]

The chipset in question is the Realtek RTL8191SE

 

There was a slightly newer version of the driver I have updated a laptop to, plus I have increased the power and roaming element from within the driver.

 

The drives are mapped via a simple logon script [ net use etc etc ] but it's only the home drive thats being dropped. I'll roll out this little driver update and change and will see how it goes. I'll also knock up a quick script which will re-connect if it drops but it would be nice to get to the bottom of the problem.

[Michael]

Another thought - are these laptops 64bit? I've come across a few problems with some wireless chipsets and 64bit drivers.

[mattx]

Another thought - are these laptops 64bit? I've come across a few problems with some wireless chipsets and 64bit drivers.

 

Not 64bit - steer well clear of that !!!

[chrbb]

Hijacking this thread, I'm having some wireless issues with our new laptops, windows 7 32 bit, after a while the wireless drops and all mapped drives and printers are lost, I've changed the power setting on the adaptor but it doesn't seem to make any difference, to get anything back the laptop has to be restarted. It's driving me and the user crazy did you sort it?

[gjdb]

Did you already try disabling power saving of the wireless nic?

[chrbb]

Yeah done that, the printers are installed at logon using printui, users can print until the connection drops.

[mthomas08]

I have seen this issue a few times, some got fixed and some still pop up every now and then. Home drive is the only one where the account is set to "Home Mapping". Its the only difference to me between this drive and the others.

 

For sure everytime it happens it is wireless related. We have tried setting a script in the users profile to map directly to their own drive and created a script in the Netlogon folder which their account points to. This seems to of fixed a few of them but still get one or two who come back. With all mappings of their account going directly to their own drive not the %username% way we have said to them manually run a file on their desktop if there is no H. It is a temporary fix I am currently testing windows 2008 R2 and I plan on testing to see if this makes a difference on their H drive mappings.

 

If it doesnt then my guess is it is the wireless type? if they resort to cable all goes through fine.