Losing Shared Drive Access

[KidNiki1]

Ok, let me begin by saying that my computer knowledge is self taught and therefore has lots of holes. I grasp concepts well, but may use the wrong terminology so I apologize in advance if this is confusing. Also, I am honestly not sure if this is a networking issue or software issue, so sorry if this ends up being in the wrong place.


We are a small office, with 5 PCs and one laptop.
My PC has an SSD, two internal HDs and two external HDs.
One of the internal HDs (named the G: drive) is shared, so that everyone in the office can save documents on it and everyone can access info on there and I have a backup (Acronis) that saves all the info on it to one of the external drives.

Since we are a small office and I am the 'IT department', I just set up everyone as a user on my PC, and then they see the shared drive on the 'work' network and connect to it and log in from their PCs.

This works fine for everyone but one user. This user routinely (once a week at least, if not more) gets randomly disconnected from the network and then cannot reconnect. He can't even see the drive on the network to connect to unless he restarts his PC, although sometimes even that does not work and I have to reboot my PC and then his, and then he can see the drive and connect.

I don't know enough to know where to even start with figuring out why he just randomly loses connection to the shared drive and why the drive vanishes completely from his list of devices on the network.

We are all running win7.

I'm sure I have left out vital info, but if anyone has ideas or needs more info, just let me know and I will do my best to get the info needed.

 

[xSauronx]

is he wireless or wired?
does he lose internet access when he loses drive access?
if you unplug his wire/disconnect wireless and reconnect can he access the drive after that?

you could check the event viewer on his pc asap once he loses that drive and see if it has anything of note
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/open-event-viewer

 

[KidNiki1]

he is wired. and no lost internet access that i know, but i'm not sure if he checks that, and i never thought of it.

i will try unplugging/replugging the network cable next time he loses the drive to see what that does.
thank you very much for someplace to at least start. 🙂

 

[KidNiki1]

ok, bumping because i have done a bit more research.

the user does NOT lose internet access at all. unplugging and plugging in the network cable does not make the shared drive visible.

i checked the event viewer and right before he said he couldn't connect, i see a lot of the following:

BITS has encountered an error communicating with an Internet Gateway Device. Please check that the device is functioning properly. BITS will not attempt to use this device until the next system reboot. Error code: 0x80040500.

and an event Id 16393

Then it says:

The browser service was unable to retrieve a list of servers from the browser master on the network (insert network string here)

the browser service has failed to retrieve the back up list too many times on (insert same string here)

The backup browser is stopping.
8032

I also see the following

Schannel 36888 fatal alert: 43
The internal error state is 252.

other users have no issues seeing and access the shared drive.

i have googled some of the error codes and verbiage, but all the answers i see pertain to running windows servers, which is not what i am doing. also, i think i can start and stop the BITS service through the command line, but that doesnt help me figure out why it is happening in the first place.

again, any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Mushkins]

Sounds like a permissions/authentication issue. This happens a lot with my laptop trying to access a shared folder on my other PC.

Try removing the user under the shared settings for the folder and re-adding user. Then disconnect and reconnect the drive from the users PC. Also on the users PC go into Control Panel > Credentials (Credentials Manager depending on windows version) and delete any saved credentials for that connection. If it asks for the users password, make sure you check the "save these credentials" box checked before hitting ok.

 

[KidNiki1]

Sounds like a permissions/authentication issue. This happens a lot with my laptop trying to access a shared folder on my other PC.

Try removing the user under the shared settings for the folder and re-adding user. Then disconnect and reconnect the drive from the users PC. Also on the users PC go into Control Panel > Credentials (Credentials Manager depending on windows version) and delete any saved credentials for that connection. If it asks for the users password, make sure you check the "save these credentials" box checked before hitting ok.

i will give this a shot, thanks so much for your time! 🙂

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is there a limitation on the number of users that can connect to one PC as a workgroup share? I think that the license limit is 10, but I don't remember on which versions of Windows that limit is actually technically enforced.

 

[KidNiki1]

Is there a limitation on the number of users that can connect to one PC as a workgroup share? I think that the license limit is 10, but I don't remember on which versions of Windows that limit is actually technically enforced.

there are only 6 people in the office. i will check to see if that may be part of it though, thanks!

 

[Mushkins]

Is there a limitation on the number of users that can connect to one PC as a workgroup share? I think that the license limit is 10, but I don't remember on which versions of Windows that limit is actually technically enforced.

I dont think so, at least not a soft limit by default but you can probably configure one. I'm sure theres a limit based on the simultaneous connections Windows can support from a hardware/OS perspective.

The thing is, Workgroups and Homegroups never really were designed to do security on sharing well. It's not terrible on 7/8, but it was a total nightmare in XP. Open sharing works fine with anyone on your network, but setting up local users/passwords and then having people connect to your protected share via those credentials was always a bit of a hack/workaround compared to true NTFS permissions in a domain environment. From personal experience, they barely work right on a good day, and if you restart the PC the share is on? Forget about it.

If it's an open, collaborative share that does not need security, my suggestion would be to just turn sharing on and all security off. It's a small enough environment that it shouldn't cause any issues. If you *need* that level of granular security, it's time to start looking at a real AD based domain with a dedicated server for AD and Filesharing. I've certainly seen companies this size with a domain before, it's not uncommon.