We have a few Windows 7 laptops on our domain and for the most part they work nicely, however if a user forgets to turn off their VPN client when they come into the office and try to access a network share //server/company for instance, it will tell thm that it cannot access it (which is correct as the laptop cannot access the network at this point. However once they are all connected to the netowrk, outlook, web all working, other drives accessible, if they try to access it again //server/company then it says access denied, but if they try by IP address then that works //192.168.1.1/company although if they try that IP method when their laptops are still not on the netowrk then that will also say access denied, but if they get it on the network and try say: //192.168.1.1/company/reports that will work. Is ther anywhere I should be looking to get windows to forget about drives it tried at access as it appears to be that if it gets told no for any reason then thats the only answer it remembers

Could it be \\server is being stored in the DNS cache as another IP address obtained when the VPN client is running? Try running ipconfig /flushdns when they are back on the network. If so, you could edit the host file to include the server name and IP. You could also try mapping to the FQDN of the server like: server.companyname.com.