Help! Howto delay maping drive until network is up?
Hello, I'm sure this has been addressed before, but I cannot find the answer. I have a network share that I want mapped to a drive letter at startup, but I get an error message because the network is not up for about 20 seconds after I log in. Is there a way to have the 'reconnect at logon' wait for the network to become available? Thanks
April 20th, 2008 1:28pm

Hi, Based on my test, I find that the message could not reconnect all network drives is just a notification letting you know that the network drives have not been reconnected during the logon. It will not prevent you from accessing the network drives once the network is available. Hope my explanation has addressed your concerns.
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April 24th, 2008 3:01am

I have experienced this same problem with network drive not connecting when the network connection is delayed. The difficulty arrises when a program is set to use the network drive letter. If the connection has not been established manually by clicking on the drive in my computer on startup, then, for example, Microsoft Money will fail when attempting to write a backup file to the network drive. So even though it is possible to access the drive manually, programs which attempt to do so will fail.If there is some way to require a delay before attempting to reconnect network drives on startup, it should solve this problem.Just to be clear, here are the steps of the problem:1) Have a previously defined network drive (x2) Have Microsoft Money set up to automatically save backup to network drive x:3) Startup computer, and receive message "Unable to reconnect all network drives."4) Open Money, do stuff5) Close Money, and get error message that drive is not accessible.Now, if after step 3 I go to My Computer, open the x: drive manually, then go on to step 4, everything works fine. But, I don't really like having to remember this. Adding a delay that allows my WiFi to get up and running before trying to reconnect the network drive should solve the problem. Is there some way to do this?Thanks for any helpM
May 10th, 2008 7:31pm

A quick workaround (in XP anyway, I haven't got Vista to test it - demonstrates this is a long standing problem that should have been fixed now wireless networks are becoming the norm and often connect late in the boot process) isto point the Money Backup file location (or any other programme that you want to access the network share without having to manually reconnect) at the UNC (\\server\share\file) rather than the drive letter(e.g. on the BT Homehub "\\thomson\bt_7g\directory\money backup file") and is now working for me. Not sure all the techies understand the problem as they're use to computers being on all day so that once they are up and running everything is okay and a quick visit to "My Computer" to manually activate the drivefirst thing in the morning doesn't bother them. For SoHo users we tend to turn the computer on to do a specific job and then turn it off again, accessing other programmes/areas of the operating system is a pain at best and very easy to forget. This can cause a big problem when using programmes like Picasa or similar which will remember media on connected drives but once the programme is started with thedrivedisconnected will forget and have to rexplore when the drive is reconnected. (is a big pain on a slow 500gb external I can tell you) Ideally Microsoft should put a second option behind "Reconnect at Logon" which is "Wait for network adaptor before attempting reconnect: wireless/lan/bluetooth,etc." Please? Pretty Please?. Thanks
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June 30th, 2008 5:23am

bump- still a problem in Windows 7
February 12th, 2009 4:18pm

This behaviour stopped for me by listing the servers where the network drives resided in LMHOSTS
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August 20th, 2009 9:03pm

Using nLite to customize your Windows XP installation, there is an option that causes mapped network drives to wait until they are accessed for the first time before they try to connect. This is the perfect solution for me but I would like to know how to change this setting after installation.
October 30th, 2009 4:56pm

While it may not prevent user from accessing the mapped drive, any application that needs to use a file in the drive with a failed reconnection status will not be able to find it, until Windows itself has succesfully mapped the drive frist during log on. Users will have to first manually refresh "My Computer" for windows to find drive, before being able to open any file through a third program. In today's Media Sharing environment, this is somewhat of a glitch, where users are storing media using DNLA hardware.
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January 31st, 2010 9:27am

This is a truely annoying and longstanding issue that is still a problem in Windows 7. I have written a small executable that solves the problem for me by allowing you to specify a timeout up until which the program will keep trying to map the drive until it is successful. I have taken this approach after some fairly extensive research. You can download the utility here .
March 7th, 2010 12:32am

This is still an issue. Please provide a work-around MSFT. Here is another idea I have, but doesn't seem to work quite right. Maybe one of you knows how to get this working.... I've heard of a way to make the wireless network "pre-login" before a user logs in. This would allow for the network to be established before your user login tries to map drives. Here is mention of it.... http://www.vistax64.com/vista-networking-sharing/63434-vista-wireless-connection-only-enabled-after-logon.html but I don't know how to do it in Win7. I think I ... might... have found a similar option in Win7 although I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly because it still doesn't work.... Go to "Control Panel->Network and Internet->Network and Sharing Center" On the left panel, click "Manage Wireless Networks". Right Click on the wireless network you are having this issue with. Select "Properties". Select the "Security" tab and then click "Advanced settings". There is a check box for "Enable single sign on for this network" which then enables "Perform immediately before user login" Is this what I'm looking for?
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July 14th, 2010 4:54pm

I have this issue as well, but with a wired ethernet connection using Windows 7 Enterprise. Behavior is the same as described above: on system restart I get a notification the network drives could not be reconnected and applications cannot access the mapped network drive until I manually go to Computer and open the mapped drive (which as a red X on it, but opens immediately when I double click on it)
July 15th, 2010 5:15pm

i would imagine the best/easiest way to do this is to make the service (of what ever app you're running) dependent on the wireless zero service (windows wireless) or lanman client service. this will force the service (application) to not run until the desired service has started. this is done through a regedit & should be done @ ur own risk... after you do the regedt you should be able to check the service & you will see the that it's now dependent. ****** The following steps need to be performed in order to create a dependency. Backup your current registry settings. Run 'regedit' to open your registry. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services and locate the service that you need to set a dependency for. Open the 'DependOnService' key on the right side. If the selected service does not have a 'DependOnService' key, then create one by right-clicking and selecting New > Multi-String Value. In the value field, enter the names of all services that the current service will depend on. Each service name must be entered properly and on a separate line. Click OK, close your registry and restart your machine.
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July 23rd, 2010 10:51am

I resent that this is considered answered. Please read nickmanners post below to understand why this is not an acceptable answer. This needs a TRUE FIX. It is a long standing problem for many.
December 20th, 2010 2:35am

Same issue with my Win7 on wireless network. There needs the ability to have a slight delay or a re attempt to connect to a mapped network drive. A TRUE FIX is needed and not work arounds that may or may not work.
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January 29th, 2011 1:50pm

Jason, with all due respect that is NOT THE ANSWER, in fact I think maybe you don't even understand the problem if you think it is. You'll notice several others on this thread have said the same thing, that you are not addressing the problem at all. I have a full windows7 pro environment with 2008 native active directory and all drives are mapped via group policy and anytime a user logs on or restarts their machine they get the popup telling them there's a problem. Now i do understand there's not really a problem, by the time they can click on a newtwork drive to see what failed it is there, but why why WHY does Windows (servers do it too) insist on telling users there's a problem when there is not?
March 10th, 2011 8:58am

This is still an issue. Please provide a work-around MSFT. Here is another idea I have, but doesn't seem to work quite right. Maybe one of you knows how to get this working.... I've heard of a way to make the wireless network "pre-login" before a user logs in. This would allow for the network to be established before your user login tries to map drives. Here is mention of it.... http://www.vistax64.com/vista-networking-sharing/63434-vista-wireless-connection-only-enabled-after-logon.html but I don't know how to do it in Win7. I think I ... might... have found a similar option in Win7 although I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly because it still doesn't work.... Go to "Control Panel->Network and Internet->Network and Sharing Center" On the left panel, click "Manage Wireless Networks". Right Click on the wireless network you are having this issue with. Select "Properties". Select the "Security" tab and then click "Advanced settings". There is a check box for "Enable single sign on for this network" which then enables "Perform immediately before user login" Is this what I'm looking for? I think the wireless network builds up berfore user login (has to be, otherwise other systems wouldn't see your shared folders without your login), and i think that's the main source of this problem. You led me to another solution. If the network builds up before you log in, that means the network services has to start before you login. The local services, such as the previously mentioned "Hálózati kapcsolatok" service (I will not help) starts right when you log in with your account. If you haven't got a password (or the system logs you in automatically with the password), all the services start at the same time, without watching each other's back. I think it's all about timing. You cannot map a network drive without login (it would be an anonymus request to the network), so the only thing you can do, is log in before you log in. And you can do this by enabling your user account to sign in as a service. It worked for me. And there's something else you can try if you want: to sign in that service (with that funny name) with the network service account (by default it logs in with the local system account).
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April 23rd, 2011 12:17pm

I'll chalk up your condescending attitude to a translation error. The problem is not a service, I do not practice voodoo, or ever intend to learn a single Hungarian word, nor have I demanded anything. Those four facts make your post 100% irrelevant. For the record I "solved" the problem throughout my enterprise with this (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937624) thanks to a post by dstones. Although I am no longer experiencing the issue or getting calls/complaints about it, the problem remains within Win7 and people should not have to hack their registries to make it go away.
April 25th, 2011 8:20am

Hi there, I had the same problem for quite a long time. I have 4 laptops (2xWin7 Ultimate, 1xWin7 Home Edition & 1xWin7 Professional). I have a Buffalo NAS and I mapped in all 4 laptops the Z: drive letter to users folders in the NAS. In one Win7 Ultimate and in the Win7 Pro, I could not make them to reconnect after reboot. The 4 laptops belong to different users, therefor different user ID´s and passwords. I use the net use command like this: net use z: \\NASname\user folder password /user:NASname\userid /persistent:yes I, as some of you guys said before, also thought it has something to do with network timing (mapped drive Z tried to connect before the network service was up & running) but then I asked my self: "why does it work in two laptops and not in the other two?"... So I started to check each windows user profile, windows login and compared it to the NAS user profile and login. What I found out was that the NAS user ID and password MUST match Windows Login user ID and password. ie., Windows user ID=tomas and Windows pwd=samot then NAS user id=tomas and NAS pwd=samot I changed the user ID and password for one of the Win7 Ultimate and Win7 Pro users at the NAS, restarted the laptops and voilá! it worked!!! .... Every time they reboot or turn on their laptops, they are automatically re-connected to the mapped drive in the NAS. That being said, I can assure you it has nothing to do with network service start-up delay. Hope this helps. JA
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January 5th, 2012 6:41pm

Hi, I use batch files with "net use" in my laptops too, but I suggest using /persistent:no and place batch file to "StartUp" folder - in 75% cases, this trick avoids to show "could not reconnect all network drives" message after return from Standby or Hibernate. :) PJ
February 17th, 2012 12:40pm

Hi: Another thing I do in my batch file is use TIMEOUT /t 60 which delays the execution of the net use commands for 60 seconds to allow other stuff to start. You can set it for anytime you want but 60 seconds works for me. Also to take it from 75% to almost 100% I inserted the command dir /b >?:test.txt (where ? is the drive letter you are trying to connect) after each net use command. What this does is to create a file on the drive with the directory listing in it. The nice thing about this is it does not go on until the file is written and if has to be connected to write it. Remember to use /persistent:no and reconnect at login box unchecked. That way when you shutdown the computer automatically forgets about the drive until the batch file in the startup folder is started and you do not get "could not reconnect all network drives". Terry
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February 24th, 2012 1:33am

I would also suggest checking out a policy which tells computer to wait for network before logging on. It's under Computer Administrative Templates->Network->System->Always wait for network at computer startup and logon. Hope it helps someone in the future.
April 16th, 2012 8:29am

Was interested in trying this fix but the location you point to for 'Always wait for network at computer startup and logon' is wrong (at least on SBS 2008). It is located at 'Computer Configuration' -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Logon. Attempting this to see if it resolves the issue.
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August 1st, 2012 11:19am

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