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Author Topic: Win XP Home SP3 & NAS - Long Delay in Network Info Mapping drive  (Read 2574 times)

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DaveLembke

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Win XP Home SP3 & NAS - Long Delay in Network Info Mapping drive
« on: February 02, 2015, 08:11:38 AM »
One of the office computers died and I swapped it out with another system that was prebuilt ready to drop into place and configure. Everything went well until attempting to Map Z: to a local D-Link NAS. When going through the process through windows XP Home SP3 to map Z: to the NAS path to the data that is to be mapped as Z: the NAS was not listed. The NAS shows a domain of APWU and the systems in the office are on the WORKGROUP domain. Even though they are on 2 different domains, generally you go there to connect to the D-Link NAS and you can navigate through to select the folder on the volume that Z: is to be mapped to and your all done.

BUT... yesterday when going there to map Z: on this system, APWU wouldnt show up even when selecting to perform a refresh of the network info. Here is what I tried without it fixing the issue at the time:

- Rebooted the computer = No Change, still missing from Network
- IPCONFIG/FLUSHDNS = No Change, still missing from Network ( I didnt think this was going to help anyways because its not really DNS related but its worth a try at just a few seconds of keystrokes and enter key. )

Went on a 5 or 10 minute coffee break to think over why its missing when the NAS is still functional to all other systems on the network.

Next attempt to get it to work:

- Rebooted the router = No Change, still missing from Network
- Rebooted the NAS after making sure that no one was on it first = No Change, still missing from Network

Walked away to deal with another issue. Came back and tried again... NOW ITS THERE!!!  in the list to map to Z: ???

Ok, well not sure why it took forever and a day to be discovered, but glad its working.

Later that afternoon another user on the small network realized that the Tax software that she is running QuickBooks Pro 2015 is not installing to her older Windows XP Home SP3 dual-core computer. Come to find out Intuit decided to drop Windows XP OS support and their software will not install to anything older than Vista. Its a Sunday and I am calling around to see if I could get a copy of Windows 7 Home or Pro to install to her Dual-Core system to get her back up and running with the W2 project that she has. No such luck. No stores sell Windows 7 anymore and only offer 8. Due to the fact that this accounting woman has never touched 8 before and has only experience with XP and 7 according to phone call with her, I come up with a plan to take one of the Windows 7 workstations that we already have here and repurpose it for her. Then place another good spare Windows XP system in place of the Windows 7 system that I pulled out. All looks promising until I yet again face the same situation with the Z: map to the NAS on yet another computer in the same day.

While working on getting this system to try to get the Z: map working and also migrating her data from her old system to this other Windows 7 system I decided to just walk away from the Z: map issue to see if it would fix itself again like the other system did. Sure enough I came back to it 4 hours later and at some point Windows XP Home SP3 discovered it. I then was able to map Z:

Question I have is... does anyone know why its taking forever and a day to discover the NAS and is there a refresh or forced discovery method that might work so that if say I needed to have access to Z: on a workstation right away I might be able to make it work right away without trying to explain to the end user to take a 1 to 4 hour break and at some point it will fix itself permanently for this system? :P   From an IT standpoint an issue like this could be embarrassing if I was put on the spot to fix the workstation right away because someone needs to use it and I have to say that its not mapping right now, but at some point it will allow to be mapped. Its not good to show that you dont have 100% control over a situation...LOL

One thing I did try to see if it would work if someone needed access to Z: was to daisy chain a drive mapping with a share from a system that is successfully mapped to Z:, BUT... Windows does not allow you to create a share on Z: of another system to then get to that Z: drive, the NAS through that other system through an \\IPaddress\sharename so that trick wont work if in a pinch to make a work around until the system decides to discover the NAS.

Attached pic shows the APWU that doesnt show up for quite some time.


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