Disconnected Network Drive

Question

We have a big problem that's just started happening. One of our network apps (may it rot in hell) requires a mapped network drive to function. Therefore, we map a drive to the network share in question for the users. This usually shows up of course in Explorer as:

Sharename on 'Servername' (Q:)

Problem is, it now shows up as

Disconnected Network Drive (Q:)

And I can't remove it in any way

• Right-click and select disconnect: "The network connection could not be found"
• CMD: net use q: /delete - "The network connection could not be found."
• CMD: net use \servername\sharename /delete - "The network connection could not be found."
• CMD: net use Q: \servername\sharename - "The device is already in use"
• Delete the user profile - no change
• Log in as new, never-logged-in-before user - same problem
• REG: delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2##servername#sharename - no change

Other items of note:

• Client machine is Windows Server 2003 R2 x86
• Server is Windows Server 2003 x86

Answer 1

Hmm, okay. I think this might have been a vendor problem!

In case it should assist anyone else (I've seen this issue a few times on Google with various responses), I disabled all the new services installed by the vendor, and after a reboot all drives were fine. It seems one of their services was mapping a drive in (.Net) code, and somehow blocking the network from then on.

Answer 2

I've had quite a few problems with mapped network drives disappearing over night and other issues. One thing I started doing was not using mapped network drives but referring to network paths using UNC notation e.g. \10.1.1.1\sharename\path\file.ext

Another issue I had was being told I was connected to a share when it wasn't listed from Windows Explorer. I had to use the NET USE command from the command-line to list, then delete, the offending connection.

Answer 3

I have had the same problem as the OP that persisted with multiple users on the same workstation running Windows XP sp3. I did some poking around in the registry and found this: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\PostBootReminders\Microsoft.NetDriveReconnectFailed.

This folder contained the following key/value pairs:

"Title"="Could not reconnect all network drives"
"Text"="Click here to open My Computer and see the status of your network drives."
"IconResource"="shell32.dll,10"
"ShellExecute"="::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}"
"ShowTime"=dword:00000000
"RetryInterval"=dword:00000000
"RetryCount"=dword:00000000
"TypeFlags"=dword:00000001

Of course, this is the text that appears in the information bubble when mapped drives can't reconnect.

When I deleted the Microsoft.NetDriveReconnectFailed folder and its keys from the registry (of course I exported them to a .reg file first), and rebooted the computer, the problem went away. Every user was able to map drives normally, and login scripts worked correctly.