mac clients disconnecting from Windows Server

[Jtrouble]

We have a Windows 2K server which is our major production file server. Our clients are a mixture of W2K pro pc clients and Mac 10.3.9 (panther) clients all clients work on our files directly on the server. It doesn't matter what the file size is but if you are copying, saving, or printing a file from the mac client to the windows 2k server you will consistently get a Message "disconnect from the server" You will disappear from your screen and the mapped drive will close, you then have to reconnect again. This can happen at any time during the day and it can happen over and over and over again. I was running a test yesterday tried to copy files that were 147 MB in total and for 40 minutes was disconnected about 10 times. I checked the event viewer on the server and it doesn't show anything relating to my crashing doesn't even acknowledge it. Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated as we are all going insane here with this problem.
Thanks

 

[Matzki]

Look into PC MacLAN.

 

[ObviousTroll]

Matzki,

That's backwards - why would he want the windows server to run appletalk - which is obsolete anyway?

Jtrouble,

I haven't seen problems like yours when I hook my Mac up to the network. Are the Macs actually part of the NT domain?

One thing to try: instead of connecting to a server by name, try connecting to it by it's IP address. if the problem goes away, its possible you have WINS troubles.

I used to have a problem where a person would plug a laptop in the network and the laptop would announce that *it* was the WINS name server instead of the real server. The windows machines seemed to ignore this, but it confused the tar out of the Mac and Linux boxes. My only work around was to connect to servers by IP address instead of depending on WINS.

 

[Jtrouble]

Our windows server is running appletalk. We have tried connecting with the IP address and well as rely on the WINS/DNS servers still the disconnecting is occurring. It isn't just one computer either. We have approx. 15 macs and it is happening to all of them.

 

[ObviousTroll]

Jtrouble,

Let me ask you this question - what happens if you connect with SMB: instead of AFP: ?

 

[Jtrouble]

That's one thing we don't want to do. Lots of problems plus we also need when you connect via smb the apple-specific information liek the icon on your files drops out. All files look like text documents and we can't work that way. We need to be able to determine our files visially. Plus connecting SMB a simple job of running flightcheck on files that are on our server which usually talks 5 minutes approx. normally will take no exageration 3-4 hours to run.

 

[ObviousTroll]

Wow. I don't know what to tell you - except "good luck", of course.

Sorry I wasn't any help!