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Network Drives always show red X

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14 replies

by dawood

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I'm running Windows 2000 Pro SP2 on a Gateway 1.5Ghz thats connected to our TCP/IP network using DHCP and WINS. Login scripts map certain network drives. The drives and data are accessible at all times except in Explorer or My Computer they alwayshave the RED X over them which means they've disconnected. I can browse the drives at any time with no problem but the RED Xs remain. Any ideas what's causing this?

14 replies

by Ryan Boudreaux140

We have found the same red X occurring on all our mapped drives in Windows 2000 (W2K) machines. Ours is a mixed network of workstations operating under servers that are all running NT 4.0 Server. The only explanation that I have found is that W2K clients do not cleanly represent certain network settings including mapped drive status and file and folder permissions.

by dawood

I too am in a mixed client with NT Servers but have only seen this situation on the one Win2K PC in question.

by dawood

Read that article and changed the autodisconnect setting to various values including -1 before ever posting the question here.

by shanghai sam

I have found the same X on my mapped network drives. If you click on the drive with the red X, you can still browse it. Also after you click on the mapped drive, the X goes away. I selected all of my Mapped drives in Explorer\Tools Disconnect MAppedDrives and disconnected all of them. I then ran the login script manually. The mappings reconnected, this time without the red Xs. I also also logged out and back in again letting the script run agian. The red xs still did not come back.

by james schroer

The red x's do represent a disconntected drive and they usually appear after X amount of time that they aren't used. So say I have an H: If I don't access it for over 15 min it will disconnect me from that server. But if you click on it, it will reconnect and allow you to browes it. The reasoning behind this is that it save network resorces on the server (according to M$) There is a place to set the time limit but I'm not sure where it's at off hand. But I have nerver had it cause a problem.

by dawood

I've tried the 'net server config /autodisconnect:xx' tip. I've tried forcing the autodisconnect time in the registry on both the server and client PC but that didn't help either.

by schley

This is because of a timeout on the server side. You can configure this on your server with the command:
NET CONFIG SERVER /AUTODISCONNECT:time
where time is the timeout period, this defaults to 15 minuts.

by james schroer

The real question is this... Is it really causing a problem? I know there are many "features" with M$ and some we just have to live with. Like rebooting the servers every month to keep them running well. That just the way they are. If it's not a problem why fix it?

by dawood

The problem is I have 4 Police Captains with guns that get really annoyed when they save a file back to their network drive, get presented with a 'can't connect to that drive, it's already connected' error and click OK and then OK again.

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