Odd mapped drive issues

Question

I have a small business customer that we just moved to a new building. Other than a new firewall the network is the same.

On one XP pro PC one of the mapped drives works fine if you reboot and keep the folder open, but if you close the folder he is unable to access it after about five minutes of it being closed. Also the computer hangs for a very long time when you try to open the drive after the initial reboot.

The path works for the other 10 people on the network, it doesn't seem to be an issue with the network card.

Any ideas, this has got me stumped.

Is it the same for any user that logs onto the machine or only this one? — Kevin Kuphal, Jun 03 '09 at 18:56
Mapped drive to where? Is this going through the new firewall? — Rob Moir, Jun 03 '09 at 19:01
this is only happening on the one pc no it is not going through the firewall, it is on the same subnet — Brandan, Jun 03 '09 at 19:04
Domain or workgroup? Do you get the same behavior when pulling the share up via UNC path (i.e. \\servername\sharename) after the mapped drive has gone kaput? — Kara Marfia, Jun 03 '09 at 19:05

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 03 '09 at 19:12

2

Nothing in the local event logs or those on the server hosting the share, presumably? Does the client work ok with a share on another server? (or set up one on another client as a test?).

Could this be a DNS issue? NetSH show any winsock issues?

*Also the computer hangs for a very long time when you try to open the drive after the initial reboot. * When I hear stuff like that with an Active Directory domain, I start to wonder about name resolution.

answered Jun 03 '09 at 19:12

Rob Moir

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they are mapped by IP address – Brandan Jun 03 '09 at 19:14
Presumably you've tried mapping this by name? I think Windows is much happier with FQDNs and netbios names than IP addresses for Windows Services. On a separate note, I notice you've posted about another oddity since moving this office. As things were working fine before, it's pretty clear that something fundamental has changed since the move. – Rob Moir Jun 03 '09 at 20:14

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 03 '09 at 19:21

I remember having something similar to this a while back. I'm trying to remember what it was exactly but I remember that Windows disconnects the drive when not in use for a specified time, about 5 mins or so and it's supposed to reconnect once you call for it but it seems to fail.

Have you tried pinging the machine before trying to opening the mapped drive? I seem to remember that was part of the solution, since like Rober said, it seems to be some sort of DNS issue.

Odd mapped drive issues

2 Answers2