Hi all,
I recently set up a windows 2012 file share server for departments and user folders. I've pushed the drive mappings out via group policy and on my laptop they work flawlessly. On everyone else's computers, they're hit or miss. Group Policy is currently mapping the drives based on IP address (i.e. \\172.31.255.250\shares\departments). As an example, this share will map to a user's device and it will be accessible. Periodically, they will no longer be able to access it and receive a "Location is not available" message. However, if I navigate to the DNS name (i.e. \\servername\shares\departments) it will work. If that location becomes unavailable later on, I can still access it via FQDN (i.e. \\servermame.domain.com\shares\departments).
More information:
- Using my account on my laptop, I never have an issue with my network drives.
- Signing in to another laptop with my account, I experience the same issues as the other users.
- All of our computers are running windows 8.1 pro and are currently up to date.
GPO configuration:
Action - Update
Location - \\172.31.255.250\shares\departments
Reconnect - True
Drive Letter - Use S:
Hide/Show this drive - Show this drive
Hide/Show all drives - No change
Edit:
I'm seeing this in the logs and don't know why it would be happening:
The user 'S:' preference item in the 'Map department folders {3B0FD149-D2DD-440B-A68D-8A137558F393}' Group Policy Object did not apply because it failed with error code '0x800708ca This network connection does not exist.' This error was suppressed.