I'm seeing this error in Windows 8.1 Explorer where a mapped network drive drops off.

when that happens you get the following message popup:



I currently see this only on Windows 8.1 Pro computers when drives are mapped to servers using GPO.

So far this is occurring on three different clients with three different servers: SBS2008, SBE2011 and SBS2011.

To resolve you click OK, then click on the the folder again is the file list reappears.

I do not see the info when this happens. This reminds me only situation when computer returns from standbye or resume and the phenomenon applies to W 7 and W 2008 R2. Reference URL is here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2907020

You will need to do some diagnostics to recover the reason of troubles (network monitor,...) and perhaps play with SMB version, autotuning, share persistency etc.

Regards

Milos

• Marked as answer by Yolanda ZhuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Monday, July 21, 2014 9:27 AM

We are having the same problem within our organization. A Windows SBS 2008 machine is the host of the mapped drives, and the mappings are created with the GPO User Configuration>Preferences>Windows Settings>Drive Maps. 

Our network has roughly (39) Windows 7 machines, (1) Windows 8.1 machine, and (1) Windows 10 Technical Preview virtual machine. The only machine with this problem is the Windows 8.1 client. This is interesting, because the 8.1 client is the host for the virtual machine, which does not exhibit the behavior. Group Policy keeps all clients from ever entering sleep or standby modes, so this is not the culprit.

We have made edits to persistency to the drive mapping parameters both on the server and the client machines without any success.

• Hotfix 297684 was applied to the drive host, but did not resolve the issue.
• The registry key had the variable <KeepConn=0xffffffff> added to it, but this also did not resolve the problem (link).

This causes losses in any file that might be open, which makes me extremely concerned with respect to updating any machines to Windows 8.1 or beyond under this network configuration.

At this point, we do not have a solution.

• Edited by SauberMFG Tuesday, October 14, 2014 9:23 PM

My windows 8.1 enterprise users are having this issue too. The users that have seen this have been able to keep trying and eventually get connected (usually within 30 minutes or less from when they first get the error). In my case the drive is mapped to a Windows 2008 R2 DFS share.

We were able to resolve this issue.

First, a clarification: this error only appeared if the user had navigated to the mapped drive in Windows Explorer. If Windows Explorer was not open to the mapped drive, this issue doesn't occur.

We can force the issue to repeat by running a forced group policy update (CMD>gpupdate /force) with the mapped drive directory opened at some level in Windows Explorer. This lead us to the fact that the issue might be stemming from the group policy updates, which happen automatically to the user level every 90 minutes or so, which I believe is the default setting on Windows Server. We map drives using the User Configuration>Preferences>Windows Settings>Drive Maps. We had the Action for these mappings set to Replace, which runs a disconnect then reconnect type of action. After changing the Action to Update, the problem went away entirely.

I think it's strange that it only happens on our Windows 8 machine.

• Proposed as answer by SauberMFG 16 hours 45 minutes ago

We were able to resolve this issue.

First, a clarification: this error only appeared if the user had navigated to the mapped drive in Windows Explorer. If Windows Explorer was not open to the mapped drive, this issue doesn't occur.

We can force the issue to repeat by running a forced group policy update (CMD>gpupdate /force) with the mapped drive directory opened at some level in Windows Explorer. This lead us to the fact that the issue might be stemming from the group policy updates, which happen automatically to the user level every 90 minutes or so, which I believe is the default setting on Windows Server. We map drives using the User Configuration>Preferences>Windows Settings>Drive Maps. We had the Action for these mappings set to Replace, which runs a disconnect then reconnect type of action. After changing the Action to Update, the problem went away entirely.

I think it's strange that it only happens on our Windows 8 machine.

• Proposed as answer by SauberMFG Friday, April 03, 2015 2:34 PM