"The network location cannot be reached"

[jlct021]

Hi

6 machines laned up with Static IP address and about 5 Laptops belonging to staff who come and go (auto obtain IP)

One of the LANed PC's running XP PRO has a shared Drive (D) that all the other PC's and Laptops have a shortcut to via a "mapped network drive" so they can access the My Documents folder. ( which is also shared; i shoud probably unshare the drive and share only the folder.)

The problem they are having that I need to solve is that at various times of the day someone will lose their ability to connect to the shared drive / folder receiving a message saying something to the effect of "the network location cannot be found and or you don’t have permission to access this folder etc." (Sorry; I don’t remember the exact message.)

When this happens I noticed that if I attempt (on any of the pc's or laptops / Win7 or XP) that have the above problem) to manually locate the share by via My Computer / Network locations / view work group computers - only the pc I’m working on shows up - none of the other PC's or Laptops on the workroup.
The problem only seems to occur on the laptops that don’t have static IP address not the permanent PC’s that do.

The desktop (unmanaged) switches are new.
File and print sharing is enabled and added and an exception added in windows firewall.
The windows 7 laptops have all their network discovery setting enabled.
All PC’s and laptops are on the same workgroup.
Static IP addresses are outside that of the DHCP server range.
The pc sharing the drive is running XP PRO as are the other laned PC’s, the laptops are a mixture of XP Home, Win 7 Starter, Win 7 Pro and Vista (not sure which version)
The problem started about 2 - 3 weeks ago; no significant changes to their network that Im aware of.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance...

 

[Peon]

Service pack and updates to the sharing XP machine?

Are there more than 10 logical connections at a time to the PC?

 

[jlct021]

Service pack 3 is already installed.

There are 6 PC's, one (network with IP address) printer, and 4 Laptops. (one of these PC's being the XP PRO Share PC) The PC's are laned up to 3 switches that connect to a Netgear Wireless ADSL Modem / Router, the 4 laptops connect wirelessly to the router.

At any given time 3 of these PC's and all 4 laptops may be accessing the share on the XP PRO PC, the remaining 2 PC's (to the best of my knowledge) do not access the share on the XP PRO PC, (but I will check today).

If I understand you're question right that means there are 11 physical (printer and xp pro share pc included) and 7 Logical connections...?

When connectivity is lost on a given machine I can still ping the share PC, printer and router, I simply cannot access the share nor see any of the other computers on the workgroup.

The loss of connectivity to the share appears to be happening only on the laptops that connect wirelessly and are assigned IP addresses from the DHCP sever on the router and not the PC's that are laned up and have static IP addresses.

 

[Peon]

Try this and see if it helps. Still not 100% sure its the 10pc limit.

 

[jlct021]

Thanks. Not sure either as (given the above setup) its under the 10 limit. Also they're not getting a error msg saying such; rather simply an msg saying "source cannot be found" or something to that effect....

 

[bubbatentoe]

Maybe force an administrative network connection (on all the clients) to the shared PC.

on the clients do:

net use l: \\sharedpc\c$ /user:sharedpc\administrator /persistent:Y

at the clients, logon one at a time while doing a "netstat" on the shared PC
refresh after each new client connection.
& count the connections.

sounds to me like you're hitting the 10 connections limit.


** This happens more often than people think and we all go hunting for switch & cable & permission issues when it's actually just MS limiting the # of connections.

 

[jlct021]

Thanks. I assumed that as the pc had SP3 all else would be up to date too; I was wrong. Auto update was off and it looked as though Windows Update had never been run.

I ran an update yesterday evening and it downloaded 650MB worth of updates. I wont know if it has solved the problem until next week when all the agents are back in the office.

Failing this; could adding a box running FreeNas / Ubuntu or a NAS device to the network and moving the shared info to it solve the problem...? Especially if it is a 10pc share limit. Thanks again.