Windows 7: Location is not available/Logon

[Danieltopia]

I current manage a Windows Network with Windows 7 Enterprise edition installed for ICT Suite. DC is Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard. Users are experiencing two problem.

 

1. Pupils cannot find their homedocuments on random computers but, they can find them on other non-specific computers. Home folders are mapped by logon script which appears to be working fine for majority of users.

 

2. Whenever a user logs on to a Windows 7 Enterprise computer that they have used in the past, it stays on the Welcome screen for about an hour before allowing access to computer.

 

Please help...

[BJG]

Pupils cannot find their homedocuments on random computers but, they can find them on other non-specific computers. Home folders are mapped by logon script which appears to be working fine for majority of users.

 

Just getting to grips with a Server 2008 R2 / Windows 7 network after a summer upgrade and having a lot of these "location is not available" issues at the moment - home folder not mapped on random computers as described, and other network folders seem to be randomly dropped. I don't think I've eradicated the hated "Offline folders" settings so I'm still tracking those down. Any thoughts on this and missing network drives appreciated.

[themightymrp]

What kind of profile system are you using? Roaming/static , mandatory or not? Getting the profiles set up right makes a huge difference. With a combination of a Mandatory network profile and folder redirection I have got our student profile (Students.V2) down to 1.3Mb and login takes anywhere up to 30 seconds depending on deployed printers/network drives etc.

[BJG]

Cheers...shared mandatory profile for students, roaming profiles for staff...

[Ergo]

Hi,

 

In response to the two problems you are experiencing;

 

1. Are there multiple IP addresses on the file server that hosts the 'homedocuments' share or multiple DNS entries for the same server? Also I would recommend implementing mapped drives in Group Policy Preferences (User Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Drive Maps > New Mapped Drive > Action (Create)

 

2. The profiles could be the root of the problem as suggested. I would recommend creating a test user, try with a local profile in the first instance and try to pin it down to a profile issue (if it is that), the next step would be place it in an Active Directory OU with no group policies applied, and gradually start applying GPOs to try and isolate if one of those is causing the problem.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Regards

 

Mark Ebrey

 

Technical Solutions & Pre-Sales Manager

Ergo Computing

[psydii]

In addition to the sound advice from Mark, please patch clients and servers as per

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/100756-offline-files-button-greyed-out.html#post867978

plus

I/O throughput is low when large files are read sequentially in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2

 

This will move you to the latest stable kernel (to fix broken cache management and support for higher services), unbreaks TCP/IP latency issues, NTFS issues, SMB Client and Server Issues, the CSC (offline Files), Group Policy and Preference processing issues.

 

and for good measure:

Event ID 5719 and event ID 1129 may be logged when a non-Microsoft DHCP Relay Agent is used

Edited September 7, 2012 by psydii

[BJG]

Great, thanks for the pointers...

[BJG]

OK, I'm looking at a Windows 7 client. If you log on under a certain student user "A" (students share a common mandatory profile), and open up My Computer, various drives show up. All of these work except the (redirected) home folder, which gives the error: "Location is not available - H:\ refers to a location that is unavailable..." etc.

 

This user "A" can log onto other machines with no problems. Another identical user "B" can use this machine with no problems. I've tried deleting the local profile both via the profile management thing and Delprof2 (checked the users folder and the registry to make sure it had gone), making them a local admin, recreating their home folder, all to no avail. I know that if I wipe this machine and rebuild it, it will work. I suspect that it's something to do with the fact that it's a redirected folder since other mapped drives work OK. Offline files are disabled. Any other ideas...?

Edited September 13, 2012 by BJG

[the_quick]

same problem here. Try login with admin account to affected machine and access shared folder for students home dir, see if it works - it does not for me, and I can access this folder no problem from other machines.

We did applied some windows updates this summer, so maybe here lies the problem. But why would it affect only some machines.

I will keep looking for solution, but so far no luck

[sted]

so pupils cant se home$ on pc1 and neither can admin?

 

if so i have seen that once i had to make 100% sure offline files was turned off on that pc (or to force it to flush its offline file cache) i believe

[the_quick]

On my network, kids can't search for shares - the address bar is disabled. But as and admin I type server name and shares do appear, just when I try to access studenthome share I get you don't have permissions message - all other folders are are fine and I can access them, just not student home.

 

What else I just discovered, I can access student home if I type FQDN name of the server - strange.

[sted]

On my network, kids can't search for shares - the address bar is disabled. But as and admin I type server name and shares do appear, just when I try to access studenthome share I get you don't have permissions message - all other folders are are fine and I can access them, just not student home.

 

What else I just discovered, I can access student home if I type FQDN name of the server - strange.

 

sounds about the same as what i had just users$ or whatever wasnt accessible by anyone including admin offed offiline files or cleared offline file cache worked again

[BJG]

That's solved it for me. I hadn't realised I wasn't able to map to these folders from the Admin account either. I used the "Fix it for me" link on this Microsoft article...

 

How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database

 

...and it did the trick. Many thanks!

[the_quick]

Found same page and same fix - worked.

 

Just wonder what cause it in first place, we have offline files disabled through GPOs.

 

Thanks for help anyway