Windows XP Master PC not allowing computers to map to shared drives...

[talksr]

Hi, A colleague of mine is having trouble in the school office.

 

They have a p2p network and have one master computer.

This master computer has a couple of shared drives which the other office computers connect to via manually created net maps.

 

He has reported that frequently, the network maps fail and the only way he can get them to work again is to restart the computer browser, server and workstation services.

 

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

He thinks the system will need an over the top install of windows.

 

I am going to head down there tomorrow and take a look. Any ideas and suggestions would be great

[Abaddon]

How many PC's? XP has a limit on connections...

[Michael]

I suspect (as above) this is why you're losing connections. XP supports upto 10 connections. If you need more, you should look into Server 2003 or 2008 which can support many more and of course offers management tools with it.

 

Schools do get huge discounts off server software, so there's no reason not to use it. Generally speaking Server 2003/2008 can be installed on the same hardware as XP.

[talksr]

Thanks for your posts.

I would have thought this, but I am sure there are not 10 systems on the admin network. If there were, I would suspect they would have had the budget for a proper server. I don't actually know how many systems they do have, but I would be surprised if they did have 10. The school is not massive (only a 1 form entry primary), so 10 potential admin staff would be pretty large.

 

I don't deal with the admin side of things (until tomorrow) but will report back.

 

Thanks again for your suggestions

[sted]

might be worth setting up a nas box/freenas on a pc that way the 10 connection limit wont apply and with any luck they will be raided drives in it so less chance of a total failure

[SHimmer45]

i have a feeling that each mapped connection from a pc counts as 1 rather than just one pc counting as 1 connection if that makes sense

[talksr]

might be worth setting up a nas box/freenas on a pc that way the 10 connection limit wont apply and with any luck they will be raided drives in it so less chance of a total failure

 

Very good idea! Thanks for that. That would actually be a real use.

[talksr]

i have a feeling that each mapped connection from a pc counts as 1 rather than just one pc counting as 1 connection if that makes sense

 

Ah interesting. In that case, that may well explain it. As I have not come across a single admin dpt that only had one mapped drive per pc.

There is usaully Public and at least Finance shared areas.

[somabc]

Don't use Windows XP as a file server. Use either the Server Editions or Linux.

 

https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/serverguide/C/samba-fileserver.html

[talksr]

I am on the pc at the moment.

 

There appears to be three shares:

Finance

Head Teacher's Documents

and

Data

 

There are three computers which link to these three shares (that makes 9) but I wonder if the master system would also count? In which case, that would make 12.

 

I have had a look on the system logs for the master computer, and there are loads of the following errors:

"DCOM was unable to communicate with the computer MASTERPC using any of the configured protocols."

 

I thought I would check on the firewall settings first. The service appears to be disabled, if I try and switch it on, it fails. I am wondering if there could actually be some issues on the master pc. There appear to be a lot of services which are currently disabled. hmmmm

[Davit2005]

If using XP Home they only have 5 concurrent connections. As suggetsed above would either build a cheap FreeNas based NAS or buy one.

 

You also won't have the problem of people not being able to connect because someone has forgotten and switched their PC with the shared folders off.

[farmerste]

dont forget to check power saving settings on the NIC also

[talksr]

It turned out that the firewall was not switched on in services.

I have switched the services on and disabled firewall for now and advised the ideas you mention above.

 

Thanks for all of your help