Odd VPN problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael A. Covington
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael A. Covington

We are using VPN to get to shared folders on our Windows 2000 server.
Current VPN setup uses Connection Manager and runs a script to map the
network drives for the user upon connecting. Clients run Windows XP.

The problem is...

Immediately upon connecting, the server name (let's call it \\servername) is
not recognized, either in the script or at the command line. For example,

net use u: \\servername\users\foo

will fail with an error 53.

But I can do a manual Map Network Drive operation in My Computer; no problem
with that. And once I do, everything is fine and I can perform "net use"
and similar operations.

What's more, if I just keep repeatedly trying some "net" command that uses
\\servername, it will eventually succeed, and then all will be well. I've
resorted to this highly barbarous kluge:

@echo Waiting for the connection...
:waitconn
@net view \\servername >nul: 2>nul:
@if errorlevel 1 goto waitconn

If I do this, then I get an error 85 on the very first Net Use after it
finally succeeds, and subsequent Net Use commands perform as advertised.

So...

(1) Is there a better way to automatically map network drives for users?
Right now we use a Connection Manager deployment that was made with CMAK and
uses our MAPDRIVES.BAT script as its action after connecting.

(2) Is there something wrong with the setup that causes \\servername not to
be recognized until you've been connected a couple of minutes?

(3) Why is the manual Map Network Drive operation (in My Computer) more
powerful than the NET USE command? Should I be using a VBSCRIPT program
with VBSCRIPT's map-network-drive operation in it?
 
Try:

net use u: \\serverIPaddress\users\foo

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
Doug Sherman said:
Try:

net use u: \\serverIPaddress\users\foo


Not any better, unfortunately.

Nor is net use u: \\servername.domain.edu\users\foo


I am going through a Linksys router -- but if it were blocking something
necessary, it would block it all the time, right? After a few minutes,
these always start to work correctly.
 
I'm also wondering why I'm *always* successful when I do a "Map Network
Drive" in My Computer (e.g., mapping Z: to \\servername\users\mc). There is
*never* a problem with it. Yet "net use" fails about half the time. What's
the difference?

And after I've done *one* manual Map Network Drive, everything works
perfectly.
 
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