Win 7 keeps loosing network shares on SBS 2003 domain
I have a number of machines connected to an SBS 2003 domain server. Running XP or Vista has no networking issues but since moving to win 7 Ultimate, my machine will now loose access to all the network shares after a period of inactivity. However, the machine has full internet access via the same server so it is not a hardware network access problem. Following logon to the domain, if I immediately open explorer and access one of the shares and then leave it open, I never loose access. But If I don't do this and leave the machine for a period of time, when I return all the shares have a red cross and then complain about no network access if I click on them. On a couple of occasions, it has managed to recover after connecting to the server via some other application but most often a full reboot is required ie not just a logoff and on again.Because I have internet access during this condition, I guess this points at a different networking layer problem. I have seen mention of some similar issues elsewhere but no resolution. Does anyone have an idea as to whether it could be a 2003 incompatibility or maybe a windows 7 problem. It also happens on another machine with totally different hardware so it is probably not hardware specific.Thanks
November 11th, 2009 8:22pm

Firstly you may check permission settings. FYI, issue in the following thread is caused by permission issues. Win7 offline files issue If the issue occurs when permission settings are correct, I suggest you temporary disable the firewalls on the Windows Server 2003 and the Windows 7 computers. If the issue still occurs, please change the NTLM authentication level to Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated in Windows 7. Network security: LAN Manager authentication levelArthur Xie - MSFT
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November 13th, 2009 11:00am

Thanks for reponse.The permissions for all the shares are full control for domain admins and read only for all domain users. I am a domain admin in this case so no problems there. If the permisssions were wrong wouldn't this be a permanent affect rather than just after a period of inactivity.I set the NTLM on windows 7 as requested, but no joy. Have alsoremove firewallswithno luck but again I do not understand why that could affect things given that this only occurs if there is no activity to the shares after a period of time. It seems that the connections to the server shares need to be kept alive if they are not to go to 'sleep' for some reason and cannot be re-awakened.This is specific to Win 7, all other op sys seem ok and it has been the same from the early release candidates through to RTM. Maybe it gets the credentials wrong when it tries to reconnect or something like that possibly.Would be very gratefull for some other ideas.Thanks
November 13th, 2009 7:12pm

Just re-read the error message a bit more thoroughly and what it actually says is:Restoring Network ConnectionsAn error occured while reconnectinmg H: to \\server\music libraryMicrosoft WQindows Networ: The lopcal device name is already in use.The connection has not been restored.Should have read this better before but it seems to think the allocation of drive letters is in use and cannot be used when it wants to map the drives. If I try to access the server from 'Network' I get the errorWindows cannot access serverError code: 0x80070035The network path was not found.So it is the sever going that leads to the shares not been able to be mapped? Don't forget that the internet is fully working and I can RDP to the server with no problems. Doesn't make sense.
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November 13th, 2009 7:38pm

Basically this is an re-authenticating issue. That is the reason I suggested you change the NTLM authentication level and check firewalls. Because firewall may block the authenticating, and different NTLM authentication level may cause the authenticating failure. You may see the following article. You may receive the "The local device name is already in use" error message when you try to restore a network mapping connection to a shared network folder on a Windows XP-based client This may be not the exact case of yours, but we can find some clues of the root cause from that. Sometimes incorrect network adapter driver will also cause this kind of issues. I suggest you upgrade the network adapter driver. Please download and install Windows 7 compatible drivers.Arthur Xie - MSFT
November 19th, 2009 10:41am

All my drivers are the latest win 7 drivers. The hardware is a Gigabyte P55M-UD4 motherboard. As I said, I don't beleive this to be a hardware/Lan driver issue as 2 completely different machines exhibit the identical fault.I read the article you link to which basically says to reset the drive mappings which I did but no change. To recap the issue is as follows:Boot machine up and log into Windows SBS 2003 domain account.Don't open windows explorer and wait a few minutes.Now open windows explorer and all the mapped drives show a red cross and complain about 'Local device name already in use'.Click on the server machine under 'Network' and get error saying 'Network path not found'.Repeat above but thistime immediately open windows explorer after login and all is well.Keep explorer open and connectiuons are never lost.I tend to agree that it is some form of re-authentiaction problem which gets invoked after a timeout of some kind but because it works from the start doesn't this mean that the credentials etc are correct. Also, if the server is lost from the network and cannot be accessed due to bad authentication, why can I access the internet via the server and why can I RDP direct to the server and login to it perfectly. Surely I would be denied access to all server functions due to bad authentication.Would very much appreciate some more ideas.Thanks
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November 19th, 2009 10:49pm

Hi, no one got any more ideas on this, is no one else loosing network connections and shares in this way?Any ideas welcome
December 3rd, 2009 10:15pm

I have exactly the same problem on a Lenovo notebook upgraded to windows 7. When I first logon to the SBS03 domain all shares are connected and work normally. After a period of time the shares are Xed out and can not be reconnected.I can ping the server which is named "SBS03" and it reports the ip address 192.9.200.4.If I type \\SBS03\ into windows explorer I get the message "Windows can not access \\SBS03"If I type \\192.9.200.4\ into windows explorer the shared drives are displayed.If I disconenct the shared drive G and reconnect with the following command the drive is connected but unavailable.net use G: \\SBS03\publicdata /yes /persistent:noIf I disconenct the shared drive G and reconnect with the following command the drive is connected and works normally (I do not know for how long). net use G: \\192.9.200.4\publicdata /yes /persistent:noThe following also appears to fix the problem without logging off.IPCONFIG /flushDNSIPCONFIG /registerDNS
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December 4th, 2009 12:12pm

Good to hear I am not alone on this one. ThanksYou have clearly identified the issue is in some way related to DNS. I just tried remapping a drive to use the IP address rather than the server name and I will see if that performs differently to the rest which would allow at least some form of workaround. Of course any other things that directly reference the sever name will continue to fail so using your IPCONFIG workaround should help with that one.What we now need to know is where this DNS issue liesand if there is some more complete workaround (or fix) that could help.
December 4th, 2009 7:24pm

Just to let you know that if I use the IP address when mapping the shares, it works fine even after all the other shares that use the server name fail. However, using the IPCONFIG /flushDNS and /registerDNScommands does not seem to recover the lost shares in my case, I still get errors for anything using the server name including Outlook trying to get to the exchange server.
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December 5th, 2009 2:21am

The IPCONFIG /flushDNS and /registerDNScommands do not appear to work for me today either.I think that connecting as IP, disconnecting then connecting as DNS does work.
December 7th, 2009 6:33am

On the advanced tab of the properties for my Gigabit network adaptorI disabled the following which appears to have fixed the problem.Large Send Offload (IPv4)Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4)TCP/UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4)TCP/UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) G: will X out but reconnects when you click on it.This was based on a post in this thread by Bluconnect.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/14fc08fb-f62b-4f86-b59f-d7a4d685b3fe
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December 15th, 2009 9:02am

Have just had a try at your suggestion but to no avail I'm afraid. The article seems to be related to network connections going down under load whereas my particular situation is more related to inactivity and the link then disappearing. I wonder what the difference is in your system that seems to make this work.
December 17th, 2009 1:41am

My network has dropped out twice today so it appears to still be broken.I was originally lead to the other thread by this thread.http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7network/thread/0588b3cd-917d-4f81-a2a8-a55bf2f005e7
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December 17th, 2009 9:25am

I also tried disabling the 'Receive side scaling' from the advanced options in my Realtek Network adaptor as suggested in one of the earlier links which also did not work but I noticed that when I re-enabled it, the network adaptor was briefly disabled as the settings are applied and then re-enabled. This then left the system in the exact same state as when the shares are lost ie: explorer has x's on the shares but the internet is accessible and the server can be RDP'ed to. So it would appear that the issue may be being triggered by a temporary disconnection of the adaptor. Does anyone have any ideas what might cause this to occur?
December 18th, 2009 7:39pm

I found that typing \\SBS03\ would not work but typing \\SBS03.primaries.local\ would work. It appears that once the disconnection occurs the DNS suffix is not being automatically appended. On the DNS tab of the "Advanced TCP/IP Settings" for the network adaptor I have selected the "Append these DNS suffixes (in order):" option and added primaries.local to the list and rebooted. I have not had a network disconnection problem for the last 24 hours.
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January 6th, 2010 8:13am

I have just had a go at your suggestion but again with no luck. Can you confirm exactly what should be enetered, should it be '<my_domain_name>.local'?My basic simple test each time I try anything is to reboot, log in as domain user and then leave machine completely unused for half an hour or so and then try to use Windows Explorer. All mapped shares are then with a red cross and inaccessible. If after a reboot I directly open windows explorer and click on a shared drive and then leave explorer open thereafter, I never loose the drives.
January 9th, 2010 7:00pm

The system icon in the control panel will show you what the full domain name is.When the disconnection occurs can you reference the drive using \\<server.name>.<full_domain.name>\
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January 9th, 2010 7:27pm

Hi,My domain name is shown as 'tannery.local' which is what i used. The server machine name is 'server'.I have just tried using \\server in the address bar in Windows explorer and it fails to connect. If I edit that to be \\server.tannery.local it connects fine. As all my shares were mapped using just \\server I guess this is why they fail. Should the fix you suggested earlier of appending a suffix of 'tannery.local' have worked therefore?Even if this were working for the shares, the network nodes shown under 'Network' which shows all machines on the network does not work for the server. Other domain clients are accessible though so is this purely a domain controller issue? Should the appending of the suffix also work for that?
January 10th, 2010 6:47pm

The suffix .tanney.local is normally automatically appended to the server names.If \\server does not work and \\server.tannery.local does work then this would indicate that the .tanney.local suffix is not being applied. In this case I would have expected specifying tannery.local in the Advanced TCP/IP settings would have fixed the problem.
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January 10th, 2010 6:59pm

I have now altered all my shares to map drives using the full Domain Name. I have also changed the profile for my user on the server so that it maps my home drive also using the full name rather than just \\server. We will see how this goes.I just looked at the 'detail' button from the Local Area Connection Status for my network card and in those details it states that the 'Connection-specific DNS Suffix' is set to a value of 'tannery.local' as it should be. This is without the fix you mention above but using the default setting of 'Append primary and connection specific DNS suffixes' on the advanced tab of TCP/IP. This implies that it is well aware that it should be using this all the time but for some reason seems to forget now and then. This tells me that we are more likely to be looking at a bug here rather than a subtle configuration difference between Vista and Win 7 which is causing the effect. What do you think?
January 10th, 2010 8:31pm

Ok, having changed all drive mappings to use the full server and domain name and also changing the path for the home drive to do the same, I have not had a single problem so far. This certainly looks like a good workaround. Obviously it would be nice to understand why it doesn't handle all this automatically especially as Vista and XP have no problems. So, maybe a configuraion difference as yet undiscovered or maybe a bug in Win 7?Would like to hear from others if it has also worked for them.
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January 13th, 2010 11:02pm

Hi Guys, I have just picked up on this thread as I have a client suffering the same problems with drive mappings. I have made the edit to the scripts as suggested above to include the full domain name for just a few users to see if this does the trick. I will update here if it does. I am wondering if anybody has got to the route cause of the problem and what settings are different on these Windows 7 machines that the SBS 2003 is having problems with.
February 3rd, 2010 5:58pm

Hi 2inkletowz. Just like to hear how you got on, did the fix work ok?
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February 9th, 2010 2:33am

Hey Guys, Just to chime in I have had this happen on two different sites, two different brands of workstation, but the fix has been the same... Added the FQDN to the login scripts and all is now well with the world. I would think this could be confirmed as a bug.
February 9th, 2010 4:17am

Folks, I found a solution - and I did not find that documented anywhere !!! The issue is the DNS Server - it HAS TO BE SBS2003 if you have a router which provides DHCP instead of SBS2003. Here is how to fix it: Set up The DNS server on SBS2003 if not done yet (with forwarding unknown to the ISP's DNS Server) If you have a router which provides DHCP point the DNS Server to your SBS2003 Server restart all PCs That did it for us - no more issues anymore. Our issue started when I changed out the firewall...
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June 16th, 2010 11:26pm

Sorry accidentally proposed as answer... admin remove proposal please. To all, Looks like you've found the solution on this one, thank you all very much. Forum after forum and everyone was looking at inactivity timeout, yet not noticing that they can't find their server after the drives drop. Well done!
January 4th, 2011 5:44pm

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