Mapped drives under Windows 2000

[David Milligan]

I'm not sure if this is relevant to your situation as it relates to shared
drives on a Win98 PC or NT server and I don't know if it will help on the
client side at all.

I was using Windows 98 to share some drives and had issues with drives
disconnecting as you have described.  After doing some  research I
discovered that Windows NT uses two different autodisconnect parameters; one
for disconnecting Remote Access Service (RAS) connections and another for
disconnecting LAN connections. The RAS Autodisconnect parameter is well
documented in the Windows NT Server Remote Access Service manual on page 82,
but the LAN version is undocumented.

The LAN autodisconnect parameter in the registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
. Its function is to disconnect idle sessions after a set number of minutes.
The number of minutes can be set at a command prompt using the Net Config
Server command. For example, to set the autodisconnect value to 30 minutes:

Net Config Server /autodisconnect:30

The valid value range of this REG_DWORD value is -1 to 65535 minutes at the
command line. To disable autodisconnect set it to: -1
Setting Autodisconnect to 0 does not turn it off and results in very fast
disconnects, within a few seconds of idle time. (However, the RAS
Autodisconnect parameter is turned off if you set it to a value of 0.)

NOTE: It is preferable to modify the LAN autodisconnect directly in the
registry. If you modify it at the command line, Windows NT may turn off its
autotuning functions.

The valid value range if you edit the LAN autodisconnect parameter in the
registry is 0 to 4294967295 (Oxffffffff). If you configure the
autodisconnect option to -1 at the command prompt, Autodisconnect is set to
the upper value in the registry. This is approximately 8,171 years (not
tested should be long enough to be the equivalent of turning autodisconnect
off."

As advised I was using Win98 to share a drive and I have found that often
registry settings which in NT are in the "LanManServer\Parameters" key are
found in Windows 95/98 in the "VxD\VNETSUP" key. I added an entry on my
shared Win98 PC for "Autodisconnect" in this key and set it to decimal 65000
and voila! no more disconnects!

NB : I had experimented with other settings to do with session timeouts and
keep alives but they did no good.

David Milligan
Technical Manager
Software Innovations Ltd
Phone:		64 3 3664881
Fax:		64 3 3798465
Email:		davidm at comrad.co.nz


> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-admin at lists.samba.org
> [mailto:samba-admin at lists.samba.org]On
> Behalf Of Steve Gonzales
> Sent: Wednesday, 8 November 2000 02:40
> To: samba at us5.samba.org
> Subject: RE: Mapped drives under Windows 2000
>
>
> This is one of those things that make you go "Hmmmm!"
>
> It's a function of W2K.  It's my understanding that after a
> certain time
> frame, all non-persistent connections are detached; however,
> they are still
> cached.  You're not online, nor are you offline.  Consider it
> "nearline."
>
> HIH!
> Steve
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: samba-admin at us5.samba.org [mailto:samba-admin at us5.samba.org]On
> Behalf Of Andy Zbikowski
> Sent: Monday, November 06, 2000 3:16 PM
> To: samba at us5.samba.org
> Subject: Mapped drives under Windows 2000
>
>
> I'm having some minor issues with network drives on windows
> 2000 that are
> mapped by the domain login script:
> The command is a basic
> net use T: \\server/share /persist:no
>
> The problem is that after awile windows 2000 shows the drive as
> disconnected. Accessing a file on the drive or double
> clicking on the drive
> seems to reestablish the drive without problem.
>
> The question is, is this a CAL saving MS trick or is SAMBA
> disconnecting the
> client? This doesn't happen with shared mapped off the
> Windows 2000 server.
> The windows 2000 users know enough to be dangerous, and
> cooked up a bat file
> to reconnect thier drives. For now this works, but there must
> be a better
> soultion. /persist:yes might do it but I haven't experimented. (Yet)
>
> Then, on the flip side of things, has anyone had troubles
> keeping a samba
> share mounted on their Linux machine? I have to remount my
> Windows home
> directory every few hours. Kinda annoying but life goes on.
>
> Any insight appreaced, I'm off to search for answers...
>
> --
> Andy Zbikowski, Sys Admin   | (PH)  763-428-9119 (EX:132)
> LTI Flexible Products, Inc. | (FAX)  763-428-9126
> 21801 Industrial Blvd       | (PCS) 612-306-6055
> Rogers, MN  55374           | (WEB) http://www.ltiflex.com
>
>