mapped drives

I was told that in Windows 2000 Professional that there the disconnecting of network drives is caused by a power management feature (look in Control Panel) that says, "Turn off all disks after xx mins". Select this to say "NEVER."

Otherwise, you should just be able to sit at your Win98 machine and access the "disconnected" drive by double clicking on it.

Hope this helps.

On the win9x machine(s) -> Network Neighborhood, properties, Client for Microsoft Networks, properties -> set Network logon options to -> logon and restore network connections; File and Printer Sharing, properties, set Browse Master to -> disabled.
On the win2k server, set the 'session disconnect on idle' to a longer time span.

The time lag you see may be related to looking up and hooking up, but then again there may be network hardware troubles, so keep us posted on the progress and we will help to get it going properly ...