After reading all similar posts the question I am facing has not been answered as yet. We have an environment with 2008R2 domain controllers and Windows 7 workstation. We have enabled network mappings through group policy preferences, the network drives are mapped to shares on a server 2003 enterprise server. The following happens, the network mappings start as disconnected with a restart and then logon. (Red cross). If we click on it, it will connect. When I then logoff and on as the same user they will start disconnected again. We have programs relying on this, so it is an annoying issue. We have enabled the always wait for network at startup gpo to no effect. In a test environment, everything works fine. What could be the problem? Also no issues with User Account Control. JUst normal users logging on.

Hi Petergray123, is your test environment using the exact same GPO/software ? (I am thinking Antivirus/filter drivers) did you try to disable every third party tools except MS one from msconfig > startup tab ? I suggest you to try to have one production machine as a test machine and get one environment as clean as possible (even uninstall third party software for testing purpose) and see if you can reproduce the issue

Hey Aurelien, I tried disabling third party software, like virusscanners, but still no joy. Hwo come a virusscanner would have any effect on networkconnections to drives?

Hi, See the following KB. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684Juke Chou TechNet Community Support

Thank you for your response this is not the issue, i meant at logon and i already had a look at this article to no effect for our problem.

Hi, Windows will drop the idle connections after a specific time-out period, the connection will be re-estabilished quickly if required. This is normal. Also, if an user logs off, the connection will be dropped too. It will be auto extabilished if any application or this user requires. Juke Chou TechNet Community Support

but it isn't connecting at logon and in my test environment it is. Plus the fact that the application in this case outlook has an archive on a home drive so it is pretty annoying. How come it happens here and not i na test environment when ittime out is not abehaviour. The connects normally if it would be normal n issue. tHe issue is it is disconnected at logon

Hi, Please make sure the option "Reconnect at logon" is checked when you map this drive. Juke Chou TechNet Community Support

hey thanks again for replying, it is checked. The files are on a server 2003 server could this have anything to do with it?