I have 6 drive letters mapped to network shares and at random times they will all disconnect (showing the red x in explorer).I've triedrunning "net config server /autodisconnect:-1" but it made no difference.When I try to re-map those drive letters I get a "local device name already in use" erro message.The only thing I've been able to do to get the drive mappings back is to reboot the pc, then at another random time they'll drop again and the cycle repeats.Any idea how to fix this, or its a bug I assume?

Can you access the drives when the red X exists? What is the system of the sharing host? If the system is Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 or SBS2003, please refer the following article. Mapped Drive Connection to Network Share May Be Lost This kind of issues can also be caused by firewall. I suggest that you temporary disable the firewall and check the result again.Arthur Xie - MSFT

I too have the same problem.I can't access the drives. They are on a Windows Server 2003 SP2 box. I'm a member of a domain.Have tried disabling the firewall, but no luck.John

Did you disconnect them before trying to re-map them?

Yes, my login script does a disconnect first before trying to map a drive letter

Did you have a script the whole time or just now? Does this still happen without a login script? I've had no issues like this and I have a similar number of mapped network drives.

Yea, whether I use a login script or not I have the issue.I'm using a Dell laptop, and it seems that every monday morning when I come back to work and plugin, I have this network drive disconnect issue after being plugged in alittle while in the morning. Nothing seems to allow the drives to re-connect, the only thing that seems to work is rebooting. Then it can happen again at any random time. Sometimes I have to reboot 2 or 3 times on Monday, then it seems to not happen again the rest of the week. I know its very weird.Its a Dell Latitude D630 using all the Windows7 RC built-in drivers. Another co-worker with the exact same model laptop (and similar software installed) does not have the issue (his was even an upgrade from Vista to Win7 RC, you'd think that would be more troublesome then a clean-install).

That is quite odd. Usually clean installs are less eventful than upgrades.

I'm having the same issue. I just did a clean install, did all the updates, added it to the domain and it won't map the drives. Even manually mapped drives go away after a reboot even though the mapping was checked that it would be a permanent drive mapping. I'm not sure what to do at this point. I have a local script that I can put on the startup folder to run after the login script has finished to do the job but that is less than ideal.

Also I have the same (sort of) problem.I startup my client, (windows 7) logs on to the Windows 2008 Server, than processes the login script, where all the network drive mappings are being made (succesfully)And after a while, the RED X appears on the network mappings. Though they are still all accessible.If you open the network mapping, it straigt away gives you the content, so the mapping is allright.But still the RED X stays, while if normally for example would have lost the connection, and you would double click your drive mapping, it should turn to green (connected) again.Anyone suggestions ? :)

Searching for this issue in Google - thisthread is at the top of the list. I have the exact same problem with Windows 7. Drive mappings go bad at random times and most of the time the only workaround is rebooting the client. My client is Windows 7 64 bit. Not an RC but the real one available for Microsoft partners. I loaded it up about 3 weeks ago. The server is Windows 2003 SP2 with all the latest patches - or at least current through a few days ago. The client and server are on the same LAN and subnet andthere are no firewall settings on the client, Windows or 3rd party. I just installed Kaspersky Antivirus on this client, but the problem predates that install. This one is a very small domain with a couple of workstations and a couple of aging servers. Curiously - just now - the S drive maps to \\infradc1\isebiz. The S drive just went offline. So in a CMD Window, I did: net use s: /delete and then net use s: \\infradc1\isebiz. And now the S drive works. The T drive also went offline. So trying the same workaround - pasting in verbatum:S:\>c: C:\Users\gregs>net use t: /deletet: was deleted successfully. C:\Users\gregs>net use t: \\infradc1\FamilyBizThe command completed successfully. C:\Users\gregs>t:An unexpected network error occurred. C:\Users\gregs>Go figure! One share came back, the other decided not to. So now the only way this workstation will get the T drive back is a reboot. Note that if I do start...run...\\infradc1\FamilyBiz, a window clickly comes up with the files and folders in that share. These are shares that have worked for years with XP clients and I have had no similar issues with any of the XP clients that have been in and out of here. The share permissions are Everyone...Full Control. The file system permissions are appropriate for what I want. I can access everythingby drive letters all day long from any XP client. The problem only shows up on this Windows 7 client. thanks- Greg Scott

Didn't mean to propose above post as answer, sorry. We are having the same issue with a storage array hosted on a machine running Windows 7 Pro on a domain. XP computers with the storage array mapped will randomly disconnect and refuse to reconnect with a "Drive already in use" or "Server could not complete the requested action" error. Rebooting the Windows 7 system clears the problem up for a time and then the issue randomly happens again. We have found a potential solution. It seems that 128-bit encryption may cause issues between Vista and Windows 7 machines connecting with XP machines. We have dropped the packet encryption level on the Windows 7 computer to 56-bit and immediately noticed an instant connection with the maps on the XP machines where before the machines had to sit and think for several seconds before connecting. We'll run with it for a few days and if it doesn't work, we're going to try the solution mentioned in the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922120 Hope this solves it. Update: encryption didn't solve the issue. Still randomly disconnecting. Going to try the knowledge base solution, though it only seems to be tenuously related. Update#2: the knowledge base solution didn't seem to fix the issue either. Back to square 1. Update#3: We downloaded TCPView and checked out the connections after the system started rejecting our XP machines again. We observed that the Windows 7 machine was receiving the handshake from the XP machines but not responding to them. This led us to check the event viewer where we found insufficient memory errors with the LAN driver in the Applications log. Looking this up led us to this forum response: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/itprovistasecurity/thread/2e6c36bd-6cc2-4113-9d21-87de9c2fa7c6 We have increased the memory allocation for the LAN driver in the Windows 7 registry and have been sending a couple of hundred GB of data to the drive array for the past hour and a half with no lockouts. I'm beginning to think this has solved the issue. We've also realized that we are still using the Windows 7 LAN driver rather than the recommended chipset drivers. We're hoping that the memory fix does the trick, but it certainly doesn't hurt to get the right drivers too. I'll update if we have any further issues. Otherwise, assume this worked. I would recommend for other users to update your LAN drivers on all machines FIRST and then try the above fix if the LAN update doesn't work. Update#4: After a week, we have had no more issues with the drives disconnecting. Increasing the memory allocation for the LAN driver per the social.technet.microsoft.com article seems to have fixed the problem. Hope this helps you guys.

Having the same issue. Didn't start happening until I pushed out a bunch of windows updates. Windows 7 64 bit/Server 2008 R2/Server 2008 domain level. Get the red "X" but still can connect to the share. Can't delete the drive mappings. I decided to push drive mappings using group policy instead of scripts, but I cannot remove the original drives. Most of the commands I run say that it isn't available anymore, but it still shows up in My Computer. Seems to be a big problem that more and more people are going to start having.

Got the same here - really frustrating - don't MS bother to test these things!

Same problem here on my machines. Funny thing is that the drive is shown as disconnected in windows explorer while "net use" command doesn't show it at all. I have a login script that maps network drives automatically and all the drives come up and one of them keeps on disappearing randomly.

I am new to Windows 7 so this is something new happening to me. My problem though is when I boot up the computer the "X's" are already there. There is no amount of time going by and then having the "X's" appear, they are there already. Anything new or different that I should/could do?

To resolve this issue, you can run the following command on your computer: net config server /autodisconnect:-1 This command will turn off the autodisconnect feature.

To resolve this issue, you can run the following command on your computer: net config server /autodisconnect:-1 This command will turn off the autodisconnect feature. True, but it'll do it only on the client side. A server side setting has to be applied as well. This command and other related options are well discussed in this kb: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297684 The very same reference was allready mentioned in the first reply to this thread, by Arthur Xie.