Network Drive Issues

[AWMGolfer]

We have been dealing with some issues, only for some users and it does not pertain to just wireless or wired users. I am not a network/server guy though I'm learning and I just want to help our network guy figure this out. It does not happen every morning, seems to be random mornings but where the two ladies in our main office login to their computer/server on their Windows 7 machines they have red X's over their network drives and can not access them. Their computers had been off through the night and this was their first power on in the morning. I came in today and decided to try a few things, I restarted the computer and had them log in again to the computer/server and their drives appeared. The other thing that also works is their drives will work if we reset the actual server. It only affects about 1/4 of the teachers, it doesn't happen every day, and it is not related to just wireless or wired computers. Any advice on anything I can look at or just to get pointed in a general direction would be appreciated. Just wondering if people have come across this issue and how they resolved it. It's been going on for 2-3 weeks now and they are getting pretty frustrated understandably so. Just want to get this fixed for them. Thanks in advance!

 

Also, after some quick searching I found a suggestion of turning off one of the settings under the power management section of the NIC card but that didn't help either.

[Michael]

Try enabling the following Group Policy -

 

Computer Config > Policies > Admin Templates > System > Logon - Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon - Enabled

 

This will slow down logons speeds slightly, but will give users everything they need from the start and not require multiple restart/logon attempts.

[AWMGolfer]

Great, going to go try it right now, thanks! Do you know why that is causing the issue? Our Superintendant likes to have explanations, because it just started as it had been fine unless an update or something made it act up. Will post back in the next couple of days on if it worked, thanks again!

[Michael]

Windows 7 typically defaults to logging the user on with cached credentials. Enabling this GPO means Windows waits until it has everything the user requires, including network drives.

[AWMGolfer]

Thanks, just enabled it so the wait and see game begins, thanks!

[witch]

As for why it should suddenly do it - I'm afraid there are absolutely no answers to that. It happened to me in one of my schools and yet has never happened in the other school despite a near-identical setup. I wonder if it is to do with lossy cables slowing things down or something

[AWMGolfer]

I'll just say it's a Microsoft thing...LOL. Thanks!

[AWMGolfer]

On Friday there was no issues, everything worked fine. This morning I went in and the same computers as usual couldn't connect to their network drives, red X's. Rebooting the computer or logging in and off did not work this time, had to reboot the server. Thanks again for any advice!

[andyturpie]

I would backtrack the network restarting any switches between the server room and the workstations. Sometimes I have found that helps.