Mapped drives would normally maintain a constant connection,...which is bad
for resources,...so to help prevent that they will automatically disconnect
after a period of inactivity,..fine no problem,...but the problem is that
they reconnect when used again but they may take a little time for the
reconnection to happen (and it may need a little "coaxing") which causes
timeouts and problems with non-technical users who think everything should
happen instantly as soon as they think of it (maybe even before the mouse
even clicks on it) ;-) When it doesn't happen that way they complain.
Using shortcuts with the UNC path does not maintain a constant connection,
so there is no possiblity of a timeout because there is nothing to timeout.
The shortcut is just a reference to a path.
Mapped drives are just a "throw-back" to the DOS and Win 3.11 days when
applications couldn't use UNC paths and required drive letters for the App
to function. Novel picked up on it and used them in the user profiles, and
Windows with NT maintained the ability for user profiles probably (in my
opinion) for the sake of "tradition". But those things should be a "thing
of the past" as far as I am concerned. The newer concepts whereby things
like the "My Documents" folder operates, including the ability to use it
with Roaming Profiles or with folder "redirection" should be considered the
replacement for those old mapped drives.
It is time to stop rubbing two sticks together to start fire and hunting for
lunch with stone knives ;-)
--
Phillip Windell [MCP, MVP, CCNA]
www.wandtv.com
Octal said:
Is this due to the NT4.0 Server or is this a W2K problem or just a
combination of the two? Do you know why not all of them do it?
Thanks
Chris
Phillip Windell said:
You will always have trouble like this. Do yourself a *big* favor and
eliminate the use of Mapped Drives and use UNC paths via "Shortcuts"
instead.
--
Phillip Windell [MCP, MVP, CCNA]
www.wandtv.com
Octal said:
I have a W2K Client connecting to a NT4.0 server. The mapped drives have
started showing a red X and when you try to save to the drive you get the
\\server\share name not available message. How ever when you browse
to
this
drive, you can access the files in it and save to it after the 3rd
attempt
of
retry on the error message. I have worked through all the autodisconnect
settings and we do not run McAfee or Innoculan. Any ideas on what
might
be
causing this?
Please help!!!
Thanks
