Network connection keeps dropping - bad hardware?
- by Bill Sambrone
Hello all,
I've into a bit of a wall with a client of mine. In an office of 20 people, he is the only one who experiences broken connections to his mapped network drives. I have everyone set up with about 6 mapped drives, all pointing to the same server (no DFS), and everyone else can access them lightning fast.
The environment consists of a mix of Windows 7 and XP machines, all 32-bit. The server holding the data everyone is mapping to is running on Server 2008 R2, and is a domain controller. We recently swapped out their old 10/100 switch for a shiny new Dell PowerConnect gigabit switch. We have also replaced an old dying Sonicwall with a shiny new one. Everything is running on an ESX host except for the DC, where everyone is getting data from.
In my client's office, we have done the following:
Swapped out his computer (Win7 and XP box)
Swapped out the desktop switch in his office
Removed the desktop switch in his office
Changed out the network cable going to the wall
Ran 'net config server /autodisconnect:-1' on the server
Disabled remote differential compression on his current Win7 box
When we swapped out his network cable, everything seemed fine for about 4 days. Normally I would get a phone call a couple times per day letting me know that Outlook has crashed (there is a 9GB PST living on the server he is always connected to), or that his software he is running from his L drive has crashed. I almost thought I had this solved, but after we rebooted the DC the other night he all of a sudden couldn't stay connected to his mapped network drives for more than 10 minutes.
When I ran 'net use' from the command prompt, it listed all the network drives where were randomly in a state of 'OK', 'Disconnected', or 'Reconnecting'.
What else should I try? Maybe there is bad wiring in the wall, patch panel, or a bad port in the new switch I have in the server room?
