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I have a Windows 2003 Server which is hosting files on a raid 5 array. When I restart the server to install update etc all workstaions on the network have to be restarted to connect to the server shares and shortcuts. Surely once the server is back online you should not have to restart the workstaions to acess the shared folders or mapped network drives.

How can I troubleshoot this?

Nixphoe
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kevin babb
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1 Answers1

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You left out some necessary information to help with your problem.

  1. What role is the server in question fulfilling (domain controller, file server, application server etc.)?
  2. What OS is the client using?
  3. How are you mapping the drives? (Are you using the users credentials and just connecting to the server or specifying credentials manually using net use * /user?)

If the server is a domain controller, it's likely that the tokens used for authentication are expiring when the DC is rebooted. That is my best guess. If the server is just a member server then I don't know. If the tokens are in fact expiring, then you would need to logout and log back in on the workstations for the drives to reconnect. Check your security and system logs to see if you see any weird events after doing the restart. More than likely the answers are in there.

Ben Pilbrow
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MikeAWood
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    Watch out how you shoot those words PDC and BDC around. They havne't been around for a while. – Nixphoe Aug 02 '11 at 23:01
  • @Mike I've replaced the references to PDC and BDC with just "domain controller". For like the past 10 years now, all domain controllers are created equal. Personally I also don't think it's to do with authentication tokens expiring - I've done a DC replacement (with all the FSMO roles being transferred as well) in the middle of the day without major issues before. – Ben Pilbrow Aug 02 '11 at 23:10
  • If you had another server to do auth in your case you wouldn't have had any issues. My assumption (possibly incorrect) was that he was doing this on his only server and rebooting it would cause the drives to become disconnected as the workstation attempted to connect back to the server while the server was restarting. I've had a few instances where all the necessary services (assume Server svc?) have yet to start and it will deny access to a share on the server (though its rare and only for a brief moment). And thank you for the PDC/BDC correction, you are correct, its been a while. – MikeAWood Aug 02 '11 at 23:17
  • As the OP is sharing files from the server it is therefore a file server. Other server roles are completely irrelevant. – John Gardeniers Aug 03 '11 at 02:51