I'm having a strange issue with my 2 2008 servers. Both servers are in a forest setup, one being my Pdc wich serves user logons and a few company systems. 192.168.1.3 The other server runs sql and the accounting program and a file share.192.168.1.4 The mappings to the 192.168.1.3 are perfectly fine, but the 2 mappings to 192.168.1.4 keep disapearing / not accesable, the suddenly being accessably, or sometimes not even showing when users log on, or disconected with the red x on the mapping. Any ideas where I can start ?

I forgot to add, When I try to remote desktop to 192.168.1.4 from any I get an error saying remote desktop is not available / the server might be off.\ But when I remote desktop from the PDC 192.168.1.3, everthing works fine

Are there any errors in the eventlog of 192.168.1.4? Perhaps you should open eventvwr.msc on that machine to verify why it appears to be dropping connections. You can also do a ping -t 192.168.1.4 from the PDC and leave it pinging for an hour to see if the 192.168.1.4 drops a lot of packets.

Not a single packet dropped ! Stil working through the event viewer, but don't notice anyting funny...

For the users that report mapped drives missing, can they still access their files by directly connecting to the server by running: \\192.168.1.4\sharename Or is the share unavailable as well?

The mapped drive re-appears after client restart, but I havent noticed anything funny when running \\192.168.1.4\sharename

What kind of script or method do you use to map the drives to the client systems?

It's a batch file that I assign to each user in their account properties.

Okay, I found a knowledge base article which states a similar issue, can you follow the steps in the article to verify if that resolves your issues. Mapped Drive Connection to Network Share May Be Lost

Will check it out and get back ! Thanx !

Hey Frannac, did the knowledge base article help you at all?

KB article did nothing... I installed on some clients, as well as both server, but still no change... It's as if the whole network connection to the server drops. What I did notice, when I keep refreshing my screen with the view of my mapped drives, I can see the mapped drives are trying to refresh, then showing the red x on the two mapped drives in question. I quickly tried accessing the server via RDP and via share \\192.168.1.4\"sharename", as well as \\servername\share. All methods failed. I also noticed something funny about the ping. It suddenly went from : reply from 192.168.1.4 bytes = 32 time<1ms TTL=128 to reply from 192.168.1.4 bytes = 32 time2ms TTL=64 with 2 replies giving 93ms. But not one timeout.

Okay you can try to follow these steps then: a. Click Start, click Run, type REGEDIT, and then click OK. b. Locate and click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache c. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value. d. Type SilentForcedAutoReconnect , and then press ENTER to name the value. e. Double-click SilentForcedAutoReconnect . f. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK. Then there is also a similar thread which might contain information of help to you: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverfiles/thread/52b03c33-c2b1-4fbd-9732-3839edeeab73/

Will check it out and report ! thank you for the help thus far !

found the root of my answer here : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverPN/thread/0f08e310-db0a-4522-a4f7-f1858bd6e5e7 http://nmkuttiady.blogspot.com/2006/05/connection-drops-when-ttl-changes.html There was another device on the network with the same IP address. But NOWHERE did I even get the faintest error or warning or anything with a IP conflict or anything ! Hopefully someone else might learn from this ! thank you very much Jbrasser for the help !

I tried the registry fix in the previous post, but still no luck ! I'm heading towards maybe a network issue, because I moved one of the shares over to another server, and that mapping has not given me any issues like before. I'm stil not happy with the ping to that server suddenly spiking to 92ms and then the mapping gives issues. I checked the bios and everywhere I can check for powersave features etc so they are all off. I also tried another NIC on the server as well as change the network cable and port on the switch.

Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=66ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Reply from 192.168.1.4: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 Why would this happen ?