Mapped network drives disconnect after some time

Stefan Falk 266 Reputation points
2020-09-05T11:33:45.45+00:00

Hello everybody,

As nobody answered to https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/2b83691e-8cee-4950-96e2-a08c5ebce1c6/mapped-network-drives-disconnect-after-some-time?forum=winserverfiles for months now, I re-post here:

A customer is running Windows Server 2019 Terminal and File servers. The terminal servers map network drives to a file share on the file server. We have problems with two applications, because the network drives are in a disconnected state after some time:

  • One has an Access database residing on the file server, accessed from several users. Access crashes on disconnect because its file handles to the database file do not work any longer.
  • A .net desktop application is used and its .exe and .dll reside on the file server. The users start the .exe from the mapped drive. When the mapped drives goes into the disconnected state, and the application needs to load something from one of its DLLs, the application crashes with an unhandled exception. The event log says that the .net runtime could not continue because the network connection was disconnected.

We have followed https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/297684/mapped-drive-connection-to-network-share-may-be-lost and set the LanManServer parameters to disconnect after 5000 instead of 15 minutes (on the file server), and set the LanManWorkstaition parameters to disconnect after 65535 instead of 600 seconds (on the terminal servers). But this did not help.

I guess we do not need to discuss whether Access databases are fantastic or file servers are fantastic or running .exes from file shares is fantastic ;-) The question is simple: What can we do to keep the network drives connected, please?

We have already tried net config server /autodisconnect:-1 but it did not solve the problem.

Best Regards,
Stefan Falk

Windows Server Storage
Windows Server Storage
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Storage: The hardware and software system used to retain data for subsequent retrieval.
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Accepted answer
  1. Stefan Falk 266 Reputation points
    2020-10-13T10:15:01.94+00:00

    Hello Sunny,

    good news, but from an unexpected source: The problem is solved. A VMware LUN had technical problems. Since relocating the virtual disks of the file server to a new LUN, the problem has gone.

    Thanks for your valued help anyway, of course!

    Best Regards,
    Stefan Falk

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  1. Stefan Falk 266 Reputation points
    2020-09-14T16:41:48.077+00:00

    Hello Sunny,

    sorry for the delay, I got no mail notification. I'll check with the customer and return here.

    Best Regards,
    Stefan

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  2. Stefan Falk 266 Reputation points
    2020-09-16T13:01:54.873+00:00

    Hello Sunny,

    The drives are mapped via a GPO. The action is "replace", mappings are not saved and auto-reapplied, but just applied each time the users log on.

    Best Regards,
    Stefan

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  3. Sunny Qi 10,906 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor
    2020-09-17T04:31:23.647+00:00

    Hi Stefan,

    Thanks for your update.

    Could you please try to create the mapped network drive manually to see if the issue still existed?

    Best Regards,
    Sunny

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  4. Stefan Falk 266 Reputation points
    2020-09-17T06:40:17.26+00:00

    Hello Sunny,

    I will try at the next opportunity and report here - thank you!

    Best Regards,
    Stefan